Being a student, I do a lot of travelling around the country, which means I spend a lot of time on the trains and the tube. If you know anything about London’s underground you’d think an introvert like me would fit right in. The underground is generally a place where people avoid talking to each other at all costs and eye contact is never made. A lot of people read to avoid the eye contact (Michael McIntyre has a brilliant sketch about this). Perfect for me, right? In practice, you would think so. Until you remember that the tube is always packed full of people, and the tube is always jerking about and stopping as abruptly as physically possible. Add to the mix my clumsy nature, and you have found a way for me to say ‘Sorry’ to as many people as humanly possible in a short space of time. Sorry my luggage is in your way. Sorry I keep falling into you. Sorry I accidentally touched your arm. Sorry I have to reach across you to hold on… You get the idea. Lucky it’s a short journey!

Sadly, my journey on the trains are a lot longer, and there’s no rule against eye contact. There’s nothing like a journey where every time you look up, a creepy old guy seems to be looking in your direction. Yet he’s the least of my worries. My biggest worry is that someone will try and sit next to me. If I see the carriage start to fill up, I start to worry, and yet if people choose to stand rather than sit next to me, I get deeply offended. And then I become self conscious. Do I smell? Am I accidentally making an angry face? Am I really just that ugly that I disgust people? These questions race through my mind until someone sits there, and then all I can think is ‘Ugh, please don’t try and talk to me.’

I don’t think I’m cut out for travel on trains. Next time I’ll just stick to time travel with the Doctor. :)