The other week I had to make a train journey. I had booked in advance and had seat reservations. I arrived at the station in plenty of time, although my train was ten minutes late. I boarded the train, noticing a lot of noise emanating from the coach my seat reservation was in. It sounded like the whole carriage of passengers was tunelessly shouting a song. When I entered the packed carriage I saw about half a dozen white men in their 20s or 30s, all wearing similar football shirts, and it became apparent that they were responsible for the cacophany. Other passengers – far and away the majority – had a range of expressions on their faces. Some looked annoyed. A lot were smiling, somewhat indulgently. A few seemed a bit scared and worried. I looked around for my seat number, and with a crushing sense of doom, realised my seat was right in the middle of these men. At this point, the men noticed my presence. All their Christmases had come at once, for here, daring to get on their train, walk in front of them and sit down next to them, was a ginger-haired female. They were so overcome with excitement at this situation that three or four of them started up with different songs, chants and general jeering at the same time on a topic obviously close to their hearts: ginger-haired women. The whole carriage was serenaded with repulsive, insulting, offensive shit on the subject for about ten minutes, before the attention of these moronic, idiotic, repugnant specimens of the human species turned onto something else, and started singing songs about that instead.
A few years ago, this would have felt like one of the worst things that could happen to me – public humiliation because of the way I happen to look. And for a nanosecond, I did start to feel that way. But now it was immediately replaced by rational thought: these men are being revolting. I am not going to feel embarrassed by this. They are the embarrassments. They are so obviously pig-ignorant, hurtful, plain stupid bullies, that it would be clear to anyone who I would respect the opinion of that they were in the wrong and I had nothing to feel ashamed of. This was my seat and I was damn well going to sit in it and read my quantum mechanics book, and they could shove it up their hopefully haemorrhoid-ridden arses.
As chance would have it, also getting on the train and with a seat booked in the same coach was an older woman who I only slightly knew. We exchanged greetings, or tried to above the shouting. She went off to find her seat, and I to put my luggage away. I noticed there was an empty seat next to hers, so I moved my stuff and went to sit with her, towards the opposite end of the carriage.
Yes, I do now have the backbone to sit in the middle of some bastards, but here was a better offer. We chatted for the next hour and a half over the din, and it was genuinely lovely to get to know her. She is in her seventies and has had a very interesting life, and we shared some common ground.
