She was about a tenth of the size of Fat Boy Huge, who whose presence opposite me on a train from Victoria I recently recorded here. (He'd eaten one kebab before we'd clered Platfrom 16) And today I had forr seats to myself. But the diminuative elderly woman who joined the train at Brighton just after I did was in her way more remarkable than FBHuge. Well, frankly, stranger.
She seemed to have a fetish for small plastic bags. She took a bag from her handbag, peered inside, took out some of its contents, mainly paper or cardboard, and... well, rearranged them apparently.
Of course I tried not to notiice. I wastrying to read. But she kept appearing in the periphery of my vision, not quite masked by pages to the Guardian. Plus, the folding and re-organsing processes were remarkably noisy.
When she had finished one bag, she folded it carefully, put it back into her handbag, and produced another. Atone point she consulted a pocket diary, as if she had written down instructions what to do next.
Just after Haywards Heath, in the third or fourth bag, she came across some thin stale white bread - the kind you might save to feed to ducks. She nibbled at it like a bird, until about the time the train raced through Three Bridges...
One more bag, a lot of peering and reorganising, Gatwick passed. And then, at last, she seemed to find what she was looking for. An excited flurry of ripped silver paper! She opened a gigantic bar of chocolate, and ate the first two squares.
