I’m thinking about personal space. I used to live in Tokyo where personal space is at a premium. The only way to get it is to close your eyes and go inside yourself. This is what people do when they are packed like sardines in the train.

PJ and I were at a coffee shop in Central today. It was packed, as they are. People were muscling in on tables, and it was interesting to watch the dynamic.

A woman sitting at a three-person table…two metrosexuals approach and ask if they can occupy the empty seats. “Are you going to talk?” she asks. The metros affirm that they will. “Then, no. I can’t concentrate on reading if people are talking around me. Why don’t you go over there?” She points at a table of boisterous teens. Surprisingly, the metros comply without a fuss. I think they are just shocked that she’s denied them.

I am amused and go back to my reading. PJ, however, starts to fidget. He starts to obsess as he is wont to do. I can see the wheels turning in his head…”what if someone asks to sit at our table…will they even ask…or will they just sit down…then what will we do?” “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Our table is too small to share.” This doesn’t appease his anxiety, and we soon have to leave.

And now for something completely different:

A friend asks: When shopping at Shelley’s for shoes, you find a pair marked down from £50 to £12. You try on the 38s, which usually fit. They are too big. You try on the 37s, and while trying to fit them on your foot, you break them. What do you do?

a) March up to the shop assistant and complain that these shoes are cheap and probably made by children in some third world country and you don’t want to buy them any way.

b) Humbly approach the shop assistant and explain what happened and offer to pay for the shoes knowing that you can take them to be repaired for a tener

c) Clandestinely put them back on the shelf and sneak out praying that the in store security guard doesn’t follow you out.

Related posts:

1. Watch This Space - Joanna Eden Quintet
2. Bowling in Bloomsbury
3. Metro-space.
4. Personal coverage of the Red Mosque siege in Pakistan
5. Space-age cycle park at Finsbury Park