Successfully navigating a tube strike is a difficult and unpredictable game. You're never quite certain how it will affect you until you're right in the thick of it. Sometimes you end up going nowhere, unable to find or board any mode of transport; sometimes you end up on an empty train as if the whole world is on holiday.
It is through a tube strike that I found myself on a 295 going south from Hammersmith. I got lucky and set out my sun lounger with the "whole world on holiday" scenario.
But a tube strike is much like a full moon. It brings out the weirdest in people. Their hair grows long and their claws grow sharp.
A young lad to my left decides to remind me of precisely this fact. He's about 13, travelling with his mum and either siblings or friends. He has two seats to himself. He's eating.
Without any acceptable or obvious reason, he simply leans forward and allows gravity to lure the contents of his mouth on to the floor. Bizarrely the contents seem completely dry and make the sound that popcorn might make when falling on the gnarled laminate flooring of a bus.
I don't think it's popcorn though, but I really can't muster the energy to turn my head and investigate further, partly because this will of course signal my disapproval, but mainly because it's full-moon-time and I'm in no mood to engage with this lad in any way. God knows what else he's got squirrelled away in his cheeks.
Baffled, I go back to the warm embrace of Google Maps, trying to figure out which bus stop will leave me with the least amount of steps between me and my destination.