On the tube I’m your regular old grumpy bum. I have an urge to staple things to people’s heads when they:

• don’t get their Oyster card out before they get to the barriers
• don’t know how to touch in and out properly
• stand in front of the barriers for no good reason
• don’t move down inside the carriage
• wear a backpack on their back/wear their massive handbag on their shoulder
• during rush hour
• knock me into the gap (it’s happened before)…

The list goes on.

And yet today I found myself being nice to someone.

It’s half-term, the time when I am at my grumpiest on the tube because I just don’t understand why families insist on travelling during peak time when I just want to get home. As I started to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on my iPod Touch I noticed a little person peering rounding a pole at my iPod. So I gave him an earphone and tilted the screen so he could watch with me. It only lasted a stop before he had to get off with his family but it was still my little touch of niceness in an otherwise grumpy world where you don’t talk to strangers.