Seat Anxiety

Sometimes, with my day job, I have to take the train over the Pennines to Leeds.

This is a very pleasant trip if you've got a seat. But too often, on the return journey, I find myself standing in the aisle with aching legs, apologising every five minutes for accidentally braining a fellow passenger with my laptop bag.

It's often a bit of a lottery with rush hour trains. You never know how many coaches they will put on, what time the train will arrive and whether all the seats will be reserved.

The result is Seat Anxiety - a form of mass hysteria where sane, rational people become pathologically fixated on a single goal - to get their arse on a seat ahead of everyone else.

It doesn't matter if the person next to you is elderly, pregnant, disabled or in a coma. If their game plan isn't good enough to beat you onto that train then that's tough. It's a jungle. We'd all like to be generous and compassionate - but those things come at a price. Having no seat can mean up to 40 minutes of moderate discomfort and a nagging feeling of resentment. And that's a price I'm just not willing to pay.

So yesterday, I was determined that this would not happen to me again. No Mr Nice Guy. I was getting a seat on that 1708 to Liverpool Lime St, come what may.

I was supposed to be travelling home with my old friend and colleague, Martin. We'd been in the same meeting together. But he has an annoying habit of asking lots of awkward questions at the end of a presentation when it's time to go home, so I deserted him and set off down the hill to the station.

On the station concourse, I grabbed my bag in my hands like a rugby ball and stepped nimbly through the thronged mass of humanity with the agility of an international scrum half. I strode up the escalator two steps at a time. As a mother pulled her small child out of my path, I heard her say, "Why people have to run up a moving escalator, I'll never know!"

Oh you naive fool, I thought to myself. Don't you realise that a delay of a few seconds could be the difference between sitting or standing for the next 40 minutes?

But then I thought, hang on - maybe she's onto something. Being with a small child is an excellent strategy. Little kids are brilliant at forcing people to give up their seats. If necessary they will cry very loudly in the face of a fellow passenger - something that I wouldn't feel able to do without risk of arrest.

I briefly considered obtaining a juvenile travelling partner, but the plan was fraught with difficulty. For a start, I don't think they would let me bring a small child into the office. And who would lend me one anyway? And on the whole a small child would only slow me down. I might miss the train altogether. And even if I got a seat, travelling with a small child would be a nightmare. They're always bellyaching over something, aren't they? They want to lie down when there's nowhere to lie down. When there's nothing to drink, they're thirsty. And they always need to wee at the most inopportune time. My God - I think I'd rather stand in a child-free carriage than sit down with a kid and have to deal with that lot.

Anyway as I approached platform 16a, I had left the naive, the slow and the physically impaired behind and was running with the leading pack - an agile and ferociously competitive bunch of people in suits, each bearing a laptop bag and a look of grim determination.

I punched the air in triumph as I realised that the train was not yet in. That meant that I could fight my way to the edge of the platform and achieve pole position before it arrived. This I did with aplomb and when the train pulled in I found myself standing right by the door, in a prime position to be the first into the carriage. For the first time in my life I had achieved the exhalted position of Door Tribe Leader!

Each carriage on the train has two doors - one at either end. When the train arrives, an unruly mob gathers around each door. At the front of each mob is the Door Tribe Leader. It is their responsibility to hit the Door Open button the very second that the doors are activated by the driver, allowing their Tribe to enter the carriage.

The Door Tribe Leader carries a lot of responsibility. If they are too slow, people at the other door for that carriage could flood in and take all the seats before his or her own tribe can get on the train. Many times I have stood in the middle of the mob and mentally urged the person nearest my door to hit the button quickly, cursing them if they allow the other lot get ahead of us.

Being Door Tribe Leader is a high-pressure situation. So it was with some trepidation that I adopted the "ready to board position" - one foot forward, arm half-raised in anticipation of pressing the button - and waited.

I stared at the Door Open button, waiting for it to light up. I was scared to blink in case it lit up while my eyes were shut and I wasted a valuable nanosecond. I stood like this for what seemed like an age. The door button wasn't lighting up! This was torture. Why were they taking so long to activate the doors? Behind me I could feel the members of my tribe thinking "Don't blink, man. For God's sake, don't blink!"

Then a horrible thought occurred to me. What if the light on my Door Open button was broken? What if they activated the doors and I stood there doing nothing while the rival tribe piled into the carriage through the other door. Imagine the shame! Imagine the social disgrace!

For a moment I contemplated repeatedly hitting the button just in case, so that the moment it was activated I would be in. But with all those people watching me I felt too self-conscious. Anyway, maybe that would be cheating. Perhaps I would be breaking some sort of unwritten platform code of ethics. So instead I gave a nervous glance to my right, just to make sure my rival tribe's door hadn't been activated. No - their tribe leader was still standing there staring with all her might at her Door Open button.

My rival looked like a fairly frail, oldish little woman. Surely her reaction times couldn't be better than mine? But then again she had got this far. You didn't get to be Door Tribe Leader unless you were up to the job. The race for the platform was a very efficient process of natural selection.

So now I was alternating my stare between the Door Open button and my rival at the other end of the carriage. My eyes flicked from side to side at an alarming rate. I must have looked like I was having some kind of fit. I could hear people in my tribe starting to become concerned. "Is he alright? What if he drops dead? We'll never get a seat then!"

Then suddenly, like the traffic lights at a F1 Grand Prix, the green light appeared. A jolt of addrenalin shot through my body and I felt my hand lurch forward as if driven by some invisible, unconscious force. The doors flew open and, with a blood-curdling cry, I led the charge onto the train like a sword-wielding Captain leading the 500 into the Valley of Death.

With a feeling of intense elation, I threw my laptop bag down onto my seat as if I was plunging the Union Flag into the soil of some far-flung corner of the Empire. I had done it! I had led my tribe to victory. They had entrusted me with the Door Open button and I had not let them down!

But my sense of triumph was short lived. As it happened, on that particular day, the train company had laid on an extra carriage and there was plenty of room. No need to rush at all. In fact half the carriage was empty. All that Seat Anxiety for nothing! I couldn't believe it. I slumped down into my seat with a sense of utter dejection.

Still, at least I was sitting down and that was what really mattered. I took a deep breath and relaxed into my precious seat. Maybe I would have a little nap.

Then, just as I was drifting off, I realised I had company. Out of all the seats she could have taken, the woman from the escalator with the small child chose to sit opposite me. I glared out of the window and cursed my luck. Meanwhile the small child let out an ear-piercing whine. "But I don't WANT organge juice! I WANT COKE!"

Christ. I hate kids, don't you?