UKC

Recently I read some advice from a famous comedian (can't remember which one) on how to keep the seat next to you empty on a crowded (pre Covid) train. Smile broadly at any passenger embarking and pat the seat beside you. To entertain myself  I tried this  today for the first time. Unfortunately for me the first person to alight knew me and sat down beside me. Oh, it's you. I didn't recognise you with mask on.

And you sat beside the creepy guy patting the seat?

Well, yes, I thought it was my luck day day!

The stuffed Labrador I picked up at an Oxfam shop is pretty useful.

A scotch bonnet chilli under your tongue to give you a feverish temperature and a strong persistent cough should do the trick. As a bonus you'll get a Covid test that day, win-win!

Persistently cough into your mask, remove said mask and survey the contents scowling. Wipe mask on seat next to you then replace. 

You may be more at risk from the occupant of the seat facing you, they are the ones breathing in your direction. 

Go to a joke shop. Buy the most realistic fake turd you can see.  Place turd on seat.

Back in the 1990s when she worked in Stockport and had to park her car, which had very dodgy locks, on some waste ground near the town centre, my wife used to leave such a thing in an easily seen position on the driver's seat.  No-one ever tried to get in.

T.

That reminds me of the film Top Secret.

Wait. You dropped your phony dog poo.

What phony dog poo?

There is only one answer to this problem. 

Be the nutter 

youtube.com/watch?v=oYYo49R_ZS0&

Ben Elton famously did a 'double seat, double seat, gotta get a double seat' routine. Which he recently reprised in his script for an episode of Upstart Crow.

A brother's female friend used to pretend to be asleep on Megabus style coaches, when they stopped for people to get on.

Baby Ruth. Works every time.

youtube.com/watch?v=TPxiXGr9nFM&

Donning a Scream mask could be an option. 

Not only scary, but Covid safe too. 

I remember a Count Arthur Strong sketch where he kept the seat free on the train by saying something like "I wouldn't sit there if I were you, my wife has just gone to the toilet with a very bad stomach and her hands have been all over that table"😀

I've always railed against such obnoxious seat hogging behaviour and delighted in being "that person" who chooses to deliberately sit next to the selfish individual pathetically trying to protect "their" space.

Being fat, leery and smelly helps.

The scowl when you pick up their bag and throw it up on the luggage rack or under the seat is priceless 😁

Sit reading this and nobody's going to want to sit next to you.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1594745250/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_mmBAFb86P17PP

😂

Used to get on the train at New Malden to Wimbledon every morning and it was always rammed, so there was never any hope for a seat.

I got on one morning and clocked a few spaces so I pushed through the crowded aisle and sat down.  I soon realised that the reason it was empty was because in one of the seats opposite was the biggest pile of vomit ever.  It was enormous.  I don't know how a single human being could have produced it...perhaps it was a joint effort from several people.  I don't know.  It was epic.  Reminded me a little of the mountain from Close Encounters.

Dont do what Jasper Carrott did in his sketch and witter on about a bomb!

I'm wondering if the scowl might be partly from you moving their bag without asking? It is somebody else's property which is right next to them, is my thinking.

It should ideally be under their own seat or on the luggage rack too, of course...

'May you move you bag so I can sit?'.

Fart a lot.  People will keep away, but if a person sits next to you, they must have lost their sense of smell, so get off quick.....

Of course it is

Exactly

If you have displayed the discourtesy of deliberately leaving a bag on a seat on a busy train, in the hope that nobody will ask you to move it, you shouldn't expect courtesy from those who are hunting around the carriage for a seat.

That's what I mean, you seem to have already decided a motive for them,  they could have just put it there for convenience, on the basis that they'll move it should somebody want to sit down, rather than deliberately setting out to foil anybody sitting down?

You seem pretty decided that people put their bag next to them to block a seat, so I'll not continue, but if ever I've lurked next to a seat with bag on it, showing I want to sit down, it's always been removed.

No, it's pretty much always a ploy to stop someone sitting beside them. It's not their first time on a train, usually.

A colleague's wife chundered over our lounge floor after a 'chinese and wine tasting' evening (yes, my work sports and social club was a bit bonkers at times). One second she was fine, the next it was like something out of the exorcist. Must've been easily 5 or 6 pints worth of what looked like sloppy red chinese food .

I'm suddenly reminded of my younger brother chundering after a plate of spag bol, and having stings of spaghetti emerging from his nose.  That's probably a memory from 35 years ago that I thought I'd never recall...

The Megabus is a bit like heroin.

If you're on it you're probably a junkie.

Or maybe you just can't afford a car?

Reminds me of when Thatcher first stigmatised bus use, saying something that could very loosely be paraphrased as 'buses are for losers'. That attitude unfortunately spread very quickly, and very soon many of our roads became clogged with the near stationary traffic caused, presumably, by 'winners'. I don't doubt that the bus deregulation she imposed at the same time had rather a large part to play in that too.

Oh for a leader that people listen to and follow with apparently total dedication.  Seriously, do you really think the decline in bus usage is down to Margaret Thatcher ?

You also get people deliberately sitting in the aisle seat on buses, with the inside one free. More than 50% of these in my observation are very obviously overweight. So what is your response to these people, when you get on the bus?

Largely, yes. Mainly by preventing local councils being able to take a responsible approach to local transport and subsidise bus travel.

And nobody thought to turn it round in the last 30 years ? The more I see the powers she's credited with, the more impressed I get. 

Thatis, of course, your prerogative. I rather think that community urban transport at a reasonable price was a great loss.

Me too.  But I don't blame a long deceased ex prime minister for the way, collectively,  we have chosen our priorities. Even now, apparently half this forum is against one of the biggest public transport infrastructure projects I can remember.

Do social distancing guidelines not mean that the seat beside you should be empty? 

Not that long deceased. Not long enough. I blame the cnut for the state of this country. No such thing as society, greed is good, me me me. She set all that shit in motion and we've been f*cked ever since. 

Yes. Because she, and her disciples believe that the market *always* knows best. So when all the bus routes are run, for profit, by private capital, guess what? The routes that don't attract enough passengers are closed.

Why does noone ever put the full quote in on society ? And where did she ever say greed is good ?

That really does not explain why bus routes that still run are massively underutilised.  The problem is that we have made car the king.

What happened to bus usage in Sheffield, after Thatcher stopped the council from running transport as a service to it's citizens, and forced it to be run for profit by private companies? Fares went up, routes were chopped, timetables altered. Usage fell off a cliff.

Edited to add: Once the ex-bus user has had enough, they buy an old banger and don't go back to public transport. 

But why is it still the case 40 years on and a new generation? Weve had umpteen years of labour government between then and now.  Buses don't need the same infrastructure investment as railways.  You can't keep blaming Thatcher for what the country is now.

We've had 11 years of labour in power since 1979.

You are right to say the problem is the car is king, and the reason for that? The car lobby have the ear of the Tories, rather than the green lobby.

I'm also guilty of using Thatcher as shorthand for blinkered dogmatic extreme deregulation and all the associated issues

They can easily be lured out of cover with a sausage roll on a length of fine fishing line.

I don't think it's just the car lobby, unless you count Jeremy Clarkson acolytes as part of the car lobby. Look at the protests when fuel prices threaten to go up.

smear peanut butter liberally round the bottom of your brown trouser legs and over your shoes and ask everyone who looks as if they might want the seat if they have any toilet paper about them ...

Budge up, fatty?