Commutable: Will Harris

Is it acceptable to eat cereal on a train?

N ot yoghurt pot man… Not yoghurt pot man… This is the refrain that runs through my head daily as the train pulls in to Haywards Heath, mental fingers crossed that the empty seat next to me will be filled by a kindly grandmother type or handsome city gent. Anyone, in fact, but yoghurt pot man.
One of the many benefits of commuting from a terminus like Brighton is that – save those days when Thameslink inexplicably decides to split its service in two like the Paul Daniels of train operators – you generally get a seat in the morning. The flip-side of this is that, as your train speeds northward, stopping off at every notch on the Sussex commuter belt, you can never guarantee who will take the seat next to you.

More often than not you’ll get lucky, and it’ll be someone just like you; someone who takes care to respect your personal space and manages not to display a single irritant behaviour. Other times, it may be a minor but manageable annoyance; an elbow over the armrest, a head nodding towards your shoulder in sleep.
Then there are those times when the person sat next to you presents a more serious challenge to your early morning zen. The snorers, the snufflers, the aggressive man-spreaders. The mobile phone terrorists who make up in volume what they lack in intelligent conversation (East Croydon is a hotbed for this kind of behaviour). Plus yoghurt pot man.
I know two things about yoghurt pot man. 1) He lives in Haywards Heath. 2) At some unidentified moment on the timeline of his life, he was seized by the bright idea that he could save time in the morning, perhaps scraping an extra quarter of an hour in bed, if he started eating his breakfast on the train. Out of a large yoghurt pot. While I sit next to him and try not to barf.

I do realise that I’m probably doing this man a great disservice. I have no doubt he is a good person, a loving husband, a pillar of the Haywards Heath community. The trouble being it’s difficult to reflect on these things objectively when the air is filled with the wet, slopping sounds of a mouth full of cereal and the surprisingly invasive odour of a stranger’s semi-skimmed. And don’t even get me started on the scraping of the pot.
Taken objectively, of course, almost every unwelcome train behaviour is an act of innocence. It’s a free country, and there is no private in public transport. I understand all these things. But I also understand there is something about being forced into a confined space with strangers that acts as an amplifier, transforming even the most minor of quirks into nothing short of a major diplomatic incident.
So I will never be the person who eats my breakfast on the train. I will wait until I get to work, and eat my breakfast in a meeting, oblivious to the stares of my co-workers, like a normal person.