The Unremarkable Woman

She was, to all appearances, what you might call a "completely normal woman".

What does that mean?

I don't know.

I suppose I mean she was unremarkable. A generic haircut in mousy brown. Glasses, I think. Clothes which my memory will only conjure as beige.

We were sitting opposite each other on the tube. It was a grey winter day and I had forgotten the props which usually helped me through my daily commute: my book. My ipod. And I had failed to get to the station in time to secure a morning Metro.

So there I was. Shuddering through the tunnels of the Bakerloo line. Glad of the warmth, but bored of the journey.

In such a situation I would usually hope for a couple to get on. Or two work colleagues. Once I overheard a fascinatingly boring conversation between two men discussing their internet broadband connections. Compared to my thoughts, after yet another day at the office, it was riveting.

But that morning, no such luck.

Just a carriage full of fellow commuters, and opposite me, most usefully positioned to entertain, was this unremarkable woman.

The train rattled on. People came and went. Glad of our seats, the unremarkable woman and I sat facing each other. Not catching each others' eyes. Not smiling. Doing nothing to reveal our internal states.

I felt overwheled by the mundane repetitiveness of my days, and not for the first time wondered at how many of life's minutes and hours I had literally wished away. Kensal Green. Queens Park. Wish we were at Oxford Circus already. Paddington. Edgware Road. Marylebone.

And then at Baker Street she reached into her handbag.

I watched. After all, I had nothing else to do. But there was no great anticipation in my watching. If you'd asked me what I expected she would produce I might have said...her mobile? A pack of hankies?

No.

Now listen. I don't want you to get too excited. It wasn't a rabbit. Or a shotgun. Or anything like that.

But nevertheless, it was something which made me sit up and take notice.

It was a tiny piece of cheese.

Wrapped in clingfilm.

It was the kind of piece of cheese you might slice off the whole cheese if you had already eaten a large meal and felt a bit guilty that you were still scoffing more.

It was the kind of piece of cheese you might be given as a sample. To taste. In a cheese shop.

It was not a snack sized piece of cheese.

It was certainly not a piece of cheese big enough to warrant being wrapped in cling film and put in a handbag.

Astonishing, I thought. But more was to come.

I watched as the unremarkable woman carefully unwrapped the cheese. She folded out the clingfilm on all sides. She lifted the cheese to her mouth, and she bit it in half.

Half the cheese eaten.

And then, as she chewed, she replaced the remaining cheese in the clingfilm, wrapped it back up, and popped the remnant in her handbag.

Such a woman, I thought to myself, is far from unremarkable.

I imagined her returning home that night. Would she have eaten the rest of the cheese by then? Or would it still be in her bag, ready to be returned to the fridge to be kept fresh? Was there a big cheese waiting in said fridge, from which the woman sliced a tiny piece every day? The Mothercheese?

We are all fascinating, I thought to myself, feeling benevolent to the human race at large.

And then an uneasy feeling crept over me. If I could watch the unremarkable woman and find her actions so alien, then was it possible that someone was at that moment watching me and thinking the same thing?

I glanced around the carriage, being sure to try and act as unremarkably as possible. But my fellow commuters showed no signs of finding me fascinating. In fact, no one was watching me at all.

I breathed a sigh of relief (tinged with disappointment), and as I did so, noticed that the train had just left Embankment Station.

I had missed my stop.