It’s insane the amount of people that don’t know how to operate a newspaper. They’ll sit there, open the newspaper out and have no way of thinking how else the paper could possibly be folded to alleviate the issue in all tube carriages — lack of space.

The problem with a newspaper is the dimension of the thing. It’s quite long and when you open it up, it’s also quite wide. In a space so densely packed it could make animals sent to the slaughter feel somewhat adequate the rag is more trouble than the paper it’s printed on.

If I were to, with no newspaper, open my arms that wide on any commute I would be considered a mad man. Commuters might then actually make space around me, not a bad plan actually, delightfully devilish.

For the fellow passenger next to me, wearing a leather jacket that is constantly rubbing me on the tricep, creating what feels like a static charge. His left back palm on my thigh, his right on some other poor curmudgeon. There can be no other solution than to have the paper fully spread out. This isn’t man spreading as it’s not a phenomenon solely in the field of men. Justifiably, it is this mans right to be informed of the world’s ongoings but his execution of the process is way off.

I pretend I have a scratch on my right knee, purposefully to touch his hand in the hope of freaking the absorbed news guzzler into realising his current bodily orientation is passé. It works, he renegotiates his position, but his brain cells are unable to understand the complex origami of the newspapers folding mechanism.

The newspapers closes tighter, causing his shoulders to wedge further between me and the commuter on the other side. This then in turn forces the crease of the paper to poke into a standing pregnant lady — that’s a joke. It’s just some poor fat bloke.

You can feel the energy of his brain working as he peers hopelessly into the dark fold of pop culture, squinting, unable to read, all the while the spine of the Metro tickling the stranger on the saddle. The paper now the shape of a very tight isosceles triangle.

Cognitive dissonance sweeps through the man as he’s no longer able to go back to his original position that my hand now occupies. And from his current vantage point on the paper it’s like peering into Tracy Emin’s tent at night.

For god sake man, just fold it! The whole carriage looks at him now, sweating under pressure. The passenger who’s rear he tickled turns and says “for god sake man, fold it” he looks up perplexed — with the usual, how dare you talk to me attitude, but this carriage is different. That won’t work. More passengers join in:

“What exactly do you expect to learn from the newspaper? I bet not how to fold it”

“Just fold it in half you hoof!”

“Fold it you bald Wally” (abit personal)

Succumb by the pressure of the entire carriage now screaming fold it, the cogs in his cranium begin to imagine for the first time in a very long time. He thinks ‘I can just wait! My stops the next one.’ But we’re wise, Carol who works at a PR firm by Warren Street knows this and she’s seen him multiple times making lives hell, tickling rears. She hits he emergency stop and we grind to halt.

*AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM YOUR DRIVER! THE TRAIN HAS BEEN HALTED DUE TO A MAN ON CARRIAGE 4 UNABLE TO FOLD HIS NEWSPAPER! I WISH TO SAY… FOLD IT FOLD IT FOLD IT FOLD IT!!*

Everyone joins in “FOLD IT! FOLD IT!”

The man is now a beetroot quivering, he begins to fold but it goes wrong, he’s trying to fold it, LENGTH WAYS!! Not even down the usual crease!

The train burst out laughing and pointing, everyone’s jumping up and down like a flock of mad hens that have been thrown a handful of corn! The train begins moving again, he submits, his hands in his palms, tears dripping. We arrive at Warren Street.

Carol from the PR firm stands to leave, not before turning to say

“Ohh if you can’t operate a paper within your allotted boundaries why didn’t you just get a fucking Time Out!”

I leave the carriage at Warren Street and see him through the window sobbing as the train goes, wait a second… he’s missed his stop!! And … Warren Street? I’ve got off too early!

I materialise in the carriage and realise I had been day dreaming, coaxed into a hallucination presumably from my body entering shock.

There’s no pressure on my right Tricep any more and the man is gone, he was very real, but very gone.

*BRIXTON EVERYBODY OFF!!*

It’s at this moment I realise, I actually have missed my stop.