Gemma Cartwright writes...
I got on at Finsbury Park. He got off at Kings Cross St Pancras. Over the course of four stops and fifteen minutes, I fell in lust on the tube this morning.
I've been finding this happening quite a lot recently. It all started when a friend introduced me to a ridiculous but highly entertaining pastime called 'the escalator game'. The rules are simple - you get on an escalator at the top (or bottom) and by the time you get off, you have to have found at least one person that you'd considering sleeping with. Obviously this works best at busy train and tube stations where you have plenty of choice. But you still end up 'settling'.
And once you've done this, people on the tube suddenly become much more attractive in comparison...
Before you know it you're staring at a handsome young man in a pinstripe suit with big doe eyes and wavy brown hair, wondering whether he's single and has a personality to match his looks. You find yourself accidentally letting your hand slip down the pole so your fingers touch his, or stumbling a bit further than you normally would when the train brakes, so you can apologise with what you hope is a winning smile when you bump into him.
Not that you'd ever catch me doing these things, of course.
Ok, maybe you would.
You see, the commute gets very boring when you do the same thing every day, and my way of making it go a bit faster involves listening to the same seven songs every morning (to time the journey) and eying up boys. It's like I have reverted back to being sixteen, standing in the playground with my Rimmel lipstick on, eating chips and pointing out 'fit lads' to my mates.
Why? Well my best party animal single friends are now in Australia and Lincoln. My London friends are slowly but surely coupling up and moving to the suburbs to raise kittens and (eventually) babies. When I go out in town, it's usually to work events with the same crowd of colleagues and industry mates that I've now known for ages. I'm not given much opportunity to go out and eye up the talent, so I have to use my time constructively on the way to and from work.
And, of course, there's no fear of rejection when you don't actually say anything.
Gemma Cartwright is probably the one you'd chuck over the cliff in 'cliff, marry or shag'. If you're the boy from the tube, do get in touch...
