Mind the gap: Proximity avoidance is as British as stewed tea

Imagine if a man came over and sat right next to you, in an otherwise empty carriage. You would interpret it as an act of aggression, and you would be right to.

Proximity avoidance is as British as stewed tea

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The other day, travelling on the London Underground just after lunchtime, I suddenly realised that, except for me, the carriage was empty. It was exhilarating and faintly unnerving: exhilarating because personal space is always at such a premium in London, and faintly unnerving because, except for me, the carriage was empty. Where was everybody? The next station was Tufnell Park. “The next station is closed,” said the tape loop. “This train will not be stopping at the next station.” Would it stop at any subsequent station? Or was it planning to cross the river Lethe and take me straight into the arms of Beelzebub?

Fortunately, at Kentish Town, the train did come to a stop, and a man got on. I breathed again. The man, however, was discombobulated. All this space! Where should he sit? He looked as confounded by choice as you would in a French supermarket, wondering which cheese to buy. After a moment of what looked like genuine distress, the man came to his senses and chose a seat as far away from me as he could. I didn't take it personally. In his shoes I'd have done exactly the same thing.

Proximity avoidance is as British as stewed tea. Imagine if a man came over and sat right next to you, in an otherwise empty carriage. You would interpret it as an act of aggression, and you would be right to. At the very least he would be setting out to make you feel uncomfortable, just for larks. And at worst he might be intending to skin you alive and use your internal organs as Christmas tree baubles. And all before the train arrived at Camden Town.

“Ah,” said my friend Stephen when I put this to him down the pub a little later, “but how about when the carriage is full?” Stephen has recently returned to north London after a decade living in Ramsgate, and is reacquainting himself with the unique horrors of the capital's public transport system.

In the rush hour that day, there had been two free seats in his carriage, one of them next to him. A young woman got on the train, saw the two free seats, looked at Stephen, and went and sat in the other seat. Stephen was mortified. Did he look like some kind of perv?

Well, I said, trying to be gentle, after the age of 50 pretty much all of us look like pervs. Did he have a book with him? No, said Stephen. That's where you went wrong, I said. Most people are actually reading the books or kindles they are holding, but a significant minority are using them as camouflage. The true perv works hard to look as unlike a perv as possible. Come and sit next to me, his body language is saying, I'm utterly safe, and those flecks of spittle at the cornerof my mouth are a figment of your imagination.

The truth is that travelling by Tube is a skill it can take a lifetime to master. It took me years, for instance, to realise that while many men just gawp directly at attractive women like simpletons, most women glance at attractive men in the reflection of the glass panel next to the end seat. So while women are constantly aware they are being stared at, to their discomfort and often disgust, most men don't know that they are being stared at at all. Of course most of them aren't being stared at, because they look like pervs. It's all incredibly complicated. Stephen is planning to get his motorbike out of mothballs, and I think I might start going by bus.