Snapshots Make A Girl Look Cheap

Excuse me? a voice said.

Yes, I said, attempting to remove the correct earphone.

Do you mind swapping seats? continued the voice and the owner of the voice indicated another person who was sat opposite, That way we can sit together.

I pondered for a moment.

In theory I would like to swap seats, I said. But there is a small problem. You see, I can tell from cursory examinations of your clothing and demeanour, not to mention the fact that I’m a totally judgemental bastard, that you are a freshly-forged couple, probably on your first visit to London and if I swap seats I’m going to have to sit directly opposite you and you are probably going to make me want to puke with all of your demonstrative lovey-dovey activities, which I will keep accidentally seeing out of the corner of my eye and which will distract me from my other highly important tasks; like reading a book, trying to guess who is going to get off at which station and deciding which person on this carriage has the best shoes.

Well, obviously it’s me, came the reply and the shoes were displayed to me in a studied-casual fashion.

Not bad, I said, but it’s not going to convince me to give up my seat. This seat is right at the end of the carriage and I do get rather pleasant blasts of cool air across me every time a train goes past the other way. The seat I will swap for affords none of these advantages.

Look, was the reply. You are right it is our first visit here and J—- and I may annoy you with our irritating tweeness and easy-going affection for each other, but consider this: if we were sat opposite we’d have to talk louder so that we could hear each other and you’d overhear annoying elements of our conversation over the quiet bits of your music and that would be far more annoying to you than an occasional peck on the cheek and/or hair ruffle don’t you think?

You have a good point, I said, but I’m still not 100% convinced. You see, I think you’ll only be on this train for one or two stops so the shouting won’t be too bad. Plus, what with it being a hot day for this time of year, the window at the end of the train carriage is wide open so I doubt you’ll be able to maintain a decent conversation for any length of time. Not to mention that because this carriage is so noisy, I’ll be careful to select “noisy” music so there won’t be any quiet bits.

Maybe this will convince you, was the reply and the bag that was being held was angled slightly differently so I could make out the details of the title and author on the spine.

Unbearable Lightness of Being? I said and, suddenly overcome by embarrassment, got off the train at the next stop before I bored everybody about how fucking wonderful Milan Kundera was although of course this book wasn’t his finest and so on and so forth.

They got their seat and as the train pulled out and I looked to see how long the next one was going to be, I noticed them taking the two seats.