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unusual : those crazy scamps By and large, passengers on London transport adhere to the no smoking rule. I've seen maybe three or four people openly flouting that rule in as many years, and considering that I arrived here from Ireland, where if someone on your bus is smoking it's probably the driver, I find that very strange indeed. Unusual, even. One of the above incidents was even more unusual than the others. It happened on the tube. I think people generally recognise the importance of not waving open flames about when in subterranean tunnels filled with pockets of invisible flammable gases, so there's an extra level of oddness at work when you spot somebody huffing on a Marlboro Light on the Jubilee Line. But that ain’t all I got. I was heading to Heathrow to catch a flight back to Dublin, and I boarded the Jubilee at London Bridge, where there was some sort of delay in progress. I deposited my arse in one seat and my rucksack in another. The carriage was practically empty. There was a middle-aged woman opposite me reading one of those supermarket chat magazines that always has a cover story involving some hideous combination of bulimia, spousal abuse and botched suicide. A few seats to the right of her was an older man, head resting on the glass partition at the end of the row of seats, eyes closed. At the end of the carriage, on my side, two teenage school girls were standing just inside the train by the open door, sharing a cigarette. Huh. You don't see that often, I remarked to myself, taking my book from my bag. A few seconds later, a curious odour floated in between me and the pages, indicating that the girls' brand of choice wasn't readily available at the local newsagent. This was going to be interesting. I looked up at the people sitting opposite, to see if they would notice what was occurring. It didn't take long. The face behind the chat magazine snapped alive, her twitching nostrils leading to a goggle-eyed look of pure outrage and disbelief. Within seconds she was addressing the girls sternly, a fairly ballsy move judging by their unimpressed glares. "What do you think you're doing?", the lady demanded. "Put that thing out!" Shrugging her shoulders, one of the girls stubbed the doobie out on the side of the train while the other rolled her eyes like a Friday night tombola. I was surprised that they had given in so easy, even as they tried to mask their defeat in the studied boredom of the nonplussed teen. This lady was pretty impressive, clearly, and she wasn't done either. "Give me that lighter!" Woah. Now that's pushing your luck right there, I thought. There's no way that's happening. To my surprise, however, one of the surly delinquents pulled a clipper from her jacket pocket and tossed it over. What the hell? It wasn't until the lady demanded that they "sit back down" that I realised what was going on: these were her children. During the commotion, the man at the end of the row of seats had opened his eyes and was checking out what was going on. As the two girls sat back down on either side of their mother she looked over at him, and as she caught his eye she gave a slightly bemused shake of the head as if to say, "Kids, eh? Can't take 'em anywhere". Yeah. Those crazy scamps. |
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