Aren’t the English supposed to keep their distance? Marius Holtan feels otherwise.
As a well-brought up Norwegian I keep my distance from strangers. I would rather stand outside in the rain than invade your personal space in a waiting room. On the escalator, my natural position is two steps below you (like the motorway sign: keep two chevrons apart). I would not dream of accidentally touching you on the train. And if you step inside my half-metre-zone I’m bound to think you’re going to mug me, or commit some other crime like starting a conversation.
But I now know I should not rush to conclusions like these because having been here a month I am starting to appreciate how you Londoners are simply used to crowds and to human contact.
In escalators you choose to stand in the spooning position. On the train you think it’s OK to lean in on me, and in the shops you see no problem in getting up close and personal.
When I’m standing at Canning Town waiting for my train, I usually opt for the least crowded part of the platform. You guys must be worried lest I am lonely, because you come and stand next to me, anyway — even when there’s plenty of unoccupied space elsewhere.
Maybe it’s because London has 14,000 people per square mile, and my hometown 210.
Sitting down next to a stranger on public transport in Norway will always provoke a shiver of anxiety. I understand that here there are too many strangers, making it impossible never to sit next to anyone. But I reckon you must be suffering from a different kind of anxiety – the result of having been denied your own personal space from a very young age, which makes you nervous if you’re not crowded together like lemmings.
Yesterday I had someone lean their bum against my hand on the DLR! I know, if you heard this said in court, you would think it the worst line of defence on record. But that really is what happened, leaving me no choice but to go home and seek solitary solace in my flat.
On my own I had the space to think about all this. It occurred to me that with London as their headquarters, the British spent a couple of centuries occupying more than a third of the world.
So I guess I should not be surprised by your recent invasion of my personal space.