did he steal your girlfriend or something?

This is particularly pronounced when I am in a bad mood: I end up inventing new and ever-more demanding standards of bus behaviour for my fellow passengers.

argh!

So now I hate everyone that stands. If people are standing downstairs in such a way as to make it difficult for me to get upstairs, well, they get thoroughly tutted at, I can tell you.

I feel really bad about it, but this morning I swung my bag really hard into the legs of a woman who stopped right in the middle of the section of oxford circus tube where you can either exit or join the central line.

I remember being on the tube on the way home from London with a massive rucksack and another smaller bag, god I was taking up so much room.

(If you didn't when's a good time to phone you?)

Standing upstairs on the bus is dangerous. I also hate people with knives.

i find life treats me better if I condemn everyone and wait for them to prostrate themselves before me and try to redeem themselves. all the while staying bright and cordial on the outside!

OK my favourite bit of complicated bus etiquette is "how do you move from sitting next to someone — as in 'the bus was full so i sat next to person A' — to a free seat next to no one, w/o setting up a vibe which says 'Yes I am moving because in fact you offend me by existing'"

My considered solution is to make a big deal of looking out of the window as soon as I've moved (or else using it as if it provides infintely better light for reading).

ps when I have a choice of people to sit next to, i also get a spasm of panic was to whether those i don't choose will be thinking WHY DOES HE HATE ME? while those i do choose are thinking WHY DO I ALWAYS GET THE PERVY MENTALIST?

(this post possibly proves that the latter have a point)

Shite Cigarette Manners: ie ppl who hold their cancer stick up at their own shoulder or slightly behind them, so that the smoke drifts away from their own precious nostrils and eyes and into the faces of other less important people. They will even do this in restaurants, where they can clearly see it going into the face of someone eating. When combined with the category/behaviour above, they drive me so insane that I find myself considering stubbing the cigarette out in their eye.

The tube is quite different: there is never an appropriate time to smile at a stranger on the tube.

ILxers who come from lands with double decker trains: how on earth do you manage?

A smile can also be an inescapable test of whether you want to talk to them. Do the polite thing and smile back even slightly, and suddenly it's all stories about darkies and letters to the council and Tony Blair.

Then I realised that such a plan marked me out as a dangerously obsessive mentalist and I quietly dropped the idea.

If one day i can manage to understand that sentence i would say i have completely mastered the english language

tim you have got it ALL WRONG! in fact i am surprised yr victim is even looking at you to receive your smile... do you try to catch their eye also?

Certainly NEVER EVER SMILE.

Remember: "Out of the eater came forth what is eaten" — it is the metaphor that just KEEPS GIVING

I'd rather find a pot of golden syrup at the end of the rainbow. Nobody'd mug me for it on the way home.

what i don't like is the wall of people that line up in front of the doors as the tube pulls to a halt. it's a blatent violation of the 'let people off first' rule by giving the people on the train nowhere to go. worse still are the people who do this at the newer jubilee line stations 'cause they know where the doors are going to be when the train arrives but stand there anyway.

oh, and picadilly line trains should have a sign on them telling people who got on at Heathrow the correct pronunciation of 'Leicester Square' and to stand on the right on escalators.

andy

I love these people, because they always lose.

If you're getting off a train you can bang into them as hard as you like while feeling very righteous. I find this satisfying.

If you're waiting to get on a train, you can smugly sneer at the people standing right in the middle of the doors. The best place to stand is just to the side (this only applies to the double doors - avoid single doors, even if the available seats are nearest them). While the folk in the middle are busy getting banged you can slip round the people disembarking and plant your arse on the best seats.

There is a tube dilemna very similar to the 'changing seats on the bus' one. That is, the best seats on the tube are end ones, i.e. the ones closest to the doors, because you then only have to sit next to one other person. When these aren't initially available, but later become so, you often have to consider whether inducing paranoia in the person you're already sitting next to is worth the move. It usually is.

Unless of course it were mark s or Tim, then I would be insulted that they didn't want to sit next to me.

My ex-wife always looked on in a mystified manner whenever anyone talked about tube or bus etiquette: when she was on a tube, that section of the carriage would be all chatting away to each other within a stop or two. She lived in a different world from the rest of us.

Also there's the people on trains who put their bags on the seat beside them and then sigh and roll their eyes when asked to move them -- even when the train is full.

Moving bus seats when vacant ones arise is a good idea JUST IN CASE you and the person next to you are going near the end of the line: so the rest of the bus is empty except the two of you sitting there feeling uncomfortable.

Aren't you usually aware from the beginning of the ride whether you're going to the end of the line?

Metra commuter trains in Chicagoland feature the challenging combo of double decker + switchable-front-or-back facing seats. Justifiable hatred is generated when you vibe someone into taking their bag off the last upstairs backwards-facing single seat , try vainly to flip the seat over, only to remember that the reason the person put their bag there in the first place is that the last seat on the upstairs is a NON-switchable backwards-facing semi-seat, and that the person was snickering at you the whole time knowing that that there is no way you going to ride all the way to Union Station with your knees crushed into theirs.

Those seats unfortunately carry another dilemma because they often have signs above them saying you should give up the seat to an elderly person or someone else who needs it more. For this reason I always avoid those seats.

"YEAH, YEAH. SEE YOU THEN, MATE. YEAH, COOl. HEY, IS CHERYL COMING? YEAH? FUCK YEAH! COOL MATE! OK! BYE! BYEE!!!"

For some reason I don't share their inability to talk civilly in public. Don't they even care that people can hear how inane their private life is?