Tonight’s journey on the tram ride home was a pleasant one due to it being my last day of work with my department. I’m not retiring just yet - I am going on secondment to another department for a year. Anyway, I passed the time on the ride home by playing Solitaire on my PocketPC because, well, I’d no work to do. Hurrah!

About 20 minutes into the journey I was suddenly interrupted by a fellow sitting nearby speaking to me.

SPOTD: You’re really into that game. You’re really absorbed, aren’t you?

I did consider proving him right by ignoring him and pretending to be more absorbed in the game than I actually was but I was in a good mood so decided to humour him. After a few observations by him that computers were changing the world (thank you for that piece of insight, Mr Few Decades Too Late) he moved onto the topic of how he was going to see his ex. Evidently she had given him the sum total of one minute of her time yet his plan was to stay there for most of the evening so he explained he had to do some fast-talking so she’d let him stay. His biggest concern was that he could smell fish somewhere and he was worried it was him.

SPOTD: Can you smell fish? I can smell it.

Me: We’ve just gone past a fish shop. Could it be that?

SPOTD: Nah, it seems to have been here for a while. It might be my bag. Perhaps it’s me? Do I smell like fish to you?

As I looked at this fellow who was tidily dressed but very bedraggled in the hair department and looking like he’d needed a shave for the past three years, I decided that I really was not that interested in smelling him. I quickly replied that I had no sense of smell so I was not the best person to ask and fortunately his stop arrived within half a minute before I had to stave off another request.

So much for the theory that not making eye contact with people makes you safer from SPOTDs on public transport…

Categories: SPOTD