So there I was sitting on the train this morning, minding my own business (which, today, was reading Shirley Hazzard's The Evening of the Holiday - recommended, of course). Opposite me sat a middle-aged lady of respectable appearance and agreeable demeanour, who was apparently applying the finishing touches to her make-up. Why so many women choose to do this on a swaying, juddering train, rattling over bumpy suburban rails, is one of life's minor mysteries, but there we go... Anyway, a little later I became aware that this woman had moved on, as it were, and was now - silence, please - applying a roll-on deodorant to both her underarms.
This was not the first time I've seen this happen on trains, but it still astonishes me. I know people increasingly behave as if they're living in a magic bubble that somehow prevents them being seen or heard - but surely there are elements of the toilette that should stay at home. A train is not a bathroom. I've also seen nail clipping - feet as well as hands - and various attentions to facial blemishes etc. . There must be a line somewhere, but I fear it's already been crossed. Heaven knows what's coming next.
Anyone had similar experiences - or (gulp) worse?
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Only if you count this burd sitting opposite trying to swallow her boyfriend whole, whilst he attempted the examination of her anatomy, fair put me off me fish and chips.
ReplyDeleteDoes somebody brushing their teeth count?
ReplyDeleteIt does, Richard, it does...
ReplyDeleteA few decades ago when women began breastfeeding in public, I stood up firmly for tradition and public decency and warned darkly that it was the beginning of a slide down a slippery slope. It was always quite embarassing when anyone would ask "a slippery slope to what?", because I really didn't have a clue. Now thanks to you, Nige, I know.
ReplyDeleteI do have this politically incorrect and rather caddish theory that many women see sharing every moist and discomforting detail of their biology with a man as the highmark of equality and intimacy. Many a new husband has learned more about those mysteries on his honeymoon than is good for him to know, and the syndrome reaches its apogee in pre-natal classes and childbirth when you can almost see the defiant challenge to you to dare react biliously etched on their faces. So I can only conclude that she found you terribly sexy in a mountain man kind of way and was coming on to you.
The only thing worse is the propensity of very large-waisted women to bend over at the hips while picking something up or arranging things in the internal pockets of their large luggage-like carryalls. It's never the lithe, young girls who bend over at the hips, its always these large past-their-prime matrons who shamelessly flaunt their ample backsides in public.
ReplyDeletePeter, you would have suffered apoplexy last night, Trinnie and Lopez staged a willies and knockers show to top them all, what is the correct description for a surfeit of pubic hair, an undergrowth perhaps ? I of course was watching purely for research purposes.
ReplyDeleteOddly, Peter, tradition is on the side of public breastfeeding, which (if discreetly done) wasn't seen as taboo until well into the 20th century, at least in England and outside the ranks of the aristocracy. However, almost everything else that offends us undoubtedly was taboo, and should have stayed that way.
ReplyDeleteBut, Nige, that's one of the joys of being a middle-aged cantankerous dinosaur. You can complain about loss of historical traditions that actually never began until quite recently. Why, I wile away many a pleasant hour complaining to my kids about the loss of a few that haven't even got going yet.
ReplyDeleteI applaud you Nige, thank goodness someone is highlighting this ghastly trend. Apart from the now everyday sight of makeup application, which I deplore, I have witnessed two particular horrors worth mentioning. The first involved a woman plucking her facial hairs and flicking them on to the lap of the person next to her, the second involved (wait for it) dental floss. As for indiscreet breastfeeding, I recall (indeed, I cannot forget) being on a particularly crowded tube when a gigantically bulbous woman, sagging swathes of superfluous flesh overflowing the sides of her seat, put her young(ish) nipper on her lap, face up, then proceeded to whip out one enormous, pendulous breast and thwop it onto the infant’s face. The child was then left there to suckle unaided, while she stuffed her face with cake. It’s a wonder it didn’t suffocate.
ReplyDeleteLola Potts
G-ross. The woman on the train sounds disgusting. Perhaps she was also trying to offend you, although, you are probably right that she wasn't even aware of you -- the magic bubble effect.
ReplyDeleteAs for breastfeeding...I breastfed both my kids and it was always an embarrassment if I had to do it in a public place, but when a baby is shrieking loudly, there really isn't a lot else you can do. We were living in D.C. when my first one was tiny and I got to know lots of restaurant's bathroom stalls, as I'd try to take her there. By the time of the second, if he got hungry in public, I just draped a cloth over the zone of activity while he was doing his thing and that was that...Unless of course he tugged it off to look at me and smile, which he often did.
Lola, I'm reeling...
ReplyDeleteSusan, a shy young mother discretely trying to comfort her helpless, shreiking link to posterity is not only inoffensive, it is a thing of beauty worthy of Botticelli. But the first time I saw it was in the mid-70s when a humourless woman of decidedly angry views on everything stripped to the waist at a dinner party between courses and started letting her little terrorist slurp away without missing an anti-imperialist beat. Many people of my generation mark their transition from youthful liberalism to disillusioned conservatism by such things as Carter's hostage fisaco, Ghaddafi's terrorism or union blackmail, but that was mine.
ReplyDeleteGentlemen, if you please, honesty is the best policy here, breast feeding is a wholly normal, healthy activity, picturesque even, not to be judged by the pendulous versus pert school of appraisal. Dimension in diameter, large or small, volumetric capacity whether full or minimal, gravitational effects, major or minor, coefficient of friction of the nipple, either wet ice on dry ice or sandpaper on stone, matters not one jot. Ladies, carry on if you please, I for one applaud you, especially you over there madame, on your unicycle, keep one eye out for the traffic though.
ReplyDeleteSome young women do gross things in public in order to discourage oglers. Works a treat, I'm told.
ReplyDeletePeter, now everything makes sense to me... about you, that is.
ReplyDelete