I'm back!

After a long self-imposed hiatus from this blog I’m back. With hopefully more stories about transport, and more specifically Tube travel & etiquette (or lack thereof).

After a particularly brilliant text message from a close friend, it made me realise I’d been neglecting my duty to spread good Tube etiquette across London.

Here is said text word for word:

‘We got on the Tube this morning and a girl was eating her breakfast cereal. From a china bowl with a metal spoon. I think it was porridge. We thought she was going to get out a kettle next.’

Quite simply a brilliant text message which paints the picture perfectly, I think you’ll agree.

I did wonder whether my friend was the only person who noticed this behaviour though and thought it was odd, having been conditioned for years by my tales of tube etiquette horror and weirdness.

Or, (as I hope) were there many people watching this creature curiously, thinking exactly the same thing?

In The Little Book of Tube Etiquette, I make it quite clear that eating on the tube is offensive and disgusting and who would want to do that anyway – hello germ breeding ground anyone?

Imagine sitting on the Tube and the person next to you pouring out their cereal and slurping it right down your ear on the way to work? Yuck.

What makes me more curious though is why this person behaves in this way. Does she think it is a normal thing to do? Is she so de-sensitised to her immediate environment of the Tube that nothing bothers her anymore?

Is the Tube such a frequented mode of transport by all of us that what we used to deem normal behaviour on public transport outdated?

Do people just treat the Tube as their second home and act in a way they would do in private because they will never see the strangers around them again?

Or are we all so properly rushed for time that eating breakfast porridge in addition to putting on make up and in one awfully disgusting case I was told about recently, cutting their toenails en route has become acceptable behaviour to some people?

Well, I for one will never adapt to this way of life. I would rather get up 20 minutes early to eat my porridge in my clean kitchen, cut my toenails (if I had to) in my bathroom and put on my make up in my bedroom mirror than do it in front of a carriage full of commuters.

And what’s more, I bloody hope that most of you agree because I certainly don’t want things to digress to the point where watching people do these things in close quarters in a frankly uncomfortable and unhygienic space on the way to work becomes ‘the norm’.

Laura King is the author of 'The Little Book of Tube Etiquette' available from Waterstones and most online retailers for £4.99 http://tinyurl.com/c2dlto9