MISSING your daily ritual of pissing off everyone on your train? Recreate it from home:
Take business calls
Imagine a loud, intrusive voice, then double it. That’s the volume of a business call in standard class. For that extra dash of realism be on speaker discussing the dullest work proposal in corporate history. No, it can’t wait 20 minutes until the office, you snap at your 12-year-old.
Place your bag on a chair
You’ve got ample leg room. You even have a cupboard under the stairs in which to stow your luggage. But for that passive-aggressive train feel, ensure that your bag is comfortably perched on the only other free chair in your home. When your other half tries to remove it, sigh loudly and roll your eyes.
Eat something that stinks
Prepare a tuna salad sandwich or reheat a bell pepper gumbo, and rather than waiting until in a canteen or well-ventilated area to eat it, seal yourself into a room with your family, prise open your plastic container and dig in while a foul reek fills the air without an iota of self consciousness.
Don’t let people out of doorways
Does your partner need to leave for work? Or perhaps your children need to go to school? As they attempt to exit, stand right in the doorway and push past them while muttering ‘f**k’s sake’. Act self-righteous and offended when they rightly give you a bollocking for being a twat.
Openly cough and sneeze
Even pre-Covid, coughing and sneezing on trains without covering your mouth was abhorrent. Recreate those halcyon days by hacking up a lung and letting rip half a dozen shotgun-blast sneezes on your housemates at point blank range. Once you’re done, add insult to injury by cheerfully saying ‘aah, much better’.
Bump and grind
Order everyone into the hallway then stand uncomfortably close to them reading their newspapers, breathing into their ears and rubbing unspecified below-waist areas against them. React indignantly when accused, blaming your laptop bag, while remaining in extreme proximity.
