A couple of mornings ago the guy sat next to me on the train uttered loudly “for fuck’s sake!” whilst reading an email on his phone.

Sigh.

What was the point in that?  Hmm?  What did that achieve?

Nothing. 

Well, I say nothing; it DID achieve a certain sense of awkwardness which was nice.

What EXACTLY was the reaction he expected from me?

I have no idea what the correct etiquette should be when all I really wanted to do was tell him to shut the fuck up because it’s early and no-one was interested in his tedious bid for attention.

But seriously, what do you say in a situation like that?

I suppose I could have turned to him with a face of deep concern and said “Oh my god friend, what’s wrong?  What’s happened?  Are you ok?  Do you need me to do anything?  Oh god it must be terrible whatever it is!”, whilst gently stroking his face and sporting a quivering bottom lip.

I suppose I also could have tutted, rolled my eyes and said “bad news eh?” in a knowing ‘we’ve all been there mate’ kind of way.

But I was wearing headphones so I opted instead to ignore him because he was a prick.