I Have No Reservations
OK...a small moral dilemma. When is it acceptable to steal someone's seat on a train? I'm asking for a friend, of course. Not that I would ever do such a thing. Except, well, just the once. Tonight.
It was that 1741 train to Aberdeen again - change at Perth for Inverness. Apparently there are supposed to be five carriages pulling out of Glasgow Queen Street but tonight because of "circumstances beyond our control" (a train-eating monster, perhaps?) there were only three. Just about every seat had one of those little reserved tickets stuck behind the headrest and so there were crowds of passengers standing in the aisles.
Then, just before the train set off I decided to chance my arm and sat in the last remaining empty seats even though it was officially reserved as far as Dundee. I reasoned that the person who was supposed to be sitting there had probably parked thenselves somewhere else. Maybe he or she had met a long-lost friend in the first carriage and even now was enjoying a good laugh as they remembered the good old days in Broughty Ferry.
But then, as the train set off I was struck by guilt. Maybe the official passenger was an old lady who was still pushing her way through the aisles and, when she saw me plonked in her seat would be too timid to ask me to move.
I could feel the glare of contempt from my fellow travellers. I buried my head in the fifteen pence PM edition of the Daily Record and ignored them.
I was so glad to change trains at Perth. You should never travel with that kind of mental baggage.
