I board the district line at Fulham Broadway for my journey home. Normally the train is quite busy, with people standing at Fulham but by the time it gets to Wimbledon theres often seats.
One day I got lucky, and got a seat at Putney Bridge – the train was still quite busy, with a number of people standing. Mostly I’m engrossed in reading my book, whatever it may be (I’m a bit behind on the reviews…expect a catchup soon). This day I looked down between chapters and saw a bulky, heavy looking bag left lying on the ground near my feet as people got off at Southfields.
Chances are that it belongs to somebody sat next to me and contains only their clothes for the week or schoolwork, or something. If thats not so, the next most likely thing is that someone has forgotten their bag, they will be upset, feel stupid, try calling the lost property department in the hope of finding it again.
Suddenly I feel conscious of people looking at me, like I’m the kind of person who would bring a suspicious bag onto the tube train. I can’t move away without making things worse.
Everywhere we go, in London at least, there are announcements reminding us that we shouldn’t trust anyone, that everyone has potential to do bad things. These announcements are fairly antisocial, they are very intrusive and start with the phrase “May I have your attention for an important security announcement”, they are pre-recorded announcements, repeated around every two minutes.
When did I turn into the enemy?
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