I have recently started travelling on The Tube a couple of afternoons a week. This is on top of my usual rush hour stints, as well as my sojourns across the evenings and weekends. Basically I am now covering all shifts.
From about 11am-3pm during weekdays, things are a little more relaxed. A few Londoners going about their business; tourists who wisely avoid peak travel times; the rich.
I have just witnessed what I presume to be the latter. An attractive blonde woman in her 40s, casually dressed but you can tell that her price range for casual is much higher than mine. The other giveaway is the massive, beautiful dog that she has with her. It's blonder than her owner but I can't tell the breed, and I'm surprised it doesn't have a fucking Oyster card dangling from its collar; it's a bit like a massive blonde labrador so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, if the woman has a house in London big enough to contain this beast then she is definitely minted.
Now if there's one thing that cuts right through the heart of the no-talking-on-The-Tube rule, it's dogs. I don't know what it is about them, but for some reason it's completely fine to just start stroking other people's dogs and talking to the owner. This happens everywhere and even The Tube's antisocial microcosm isn't immune to it.
I'm on the District line to Paddington, sat in business class of course. The woman and dog are stood by the door opposite. At this point the woman next to me takes a break from eating her Cornetto to try and lure the dog away for a good old grope, even though this would require both the owner and dog move at least a metre to accommodate it. She's got her arm outstretched, doing that thing where you are sort of ushering it over but also pretending to have food. The dog, seemingly the most hardened of all the tube travellers on the carriage, makes little eye contact and ignores the interaction. Good lad. The owner doesn't notice.
The train terminated early at High St Kensington so I was stuck there for a few minutes. It was at this point I witnessed a man walking down the platform holding a folded blanket in the same way a posh waiter would hold a tray. Sat atop the blanket was a tiny black kitten. I think I was the only one to spot this bizarre juxtaposition.
And that was that.
PS - saw a dog on the way home too. Looked like a fat jack russell with short legs. Fat body normal face. Just FYI.