Excerpt from Chapter 7 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':
He had attempted to fill what he perceived as a space the exact shape as the one he had assumed jumping into the carriage. His bulk, however, had accommodated itself instead via the seismic reconfiguration of bodies. Somebody was heard to tut in protest, but that was that. That is the Tube. An ordeal that cannot be borne with interaction between fellow travellers.
Professor Breville O’Singh panted heavily. Back on track, he hoped, he prayed. Distractedly, the professor found himself surveying the carriage-scape, the human tableau, through the thicket of standing bodies. ‘Pompeii!’ he exclaimed to a studiously impervious audience. The passengers called to O’Singh’s mind residents of the Roman city petrified instantly by volcanic ash issuing from neighbourly Mount Vesuvius. Frozen, they were, in every imaginable form of human activity – queuing at the baker’s, stroking dogs, touching custard. And likewise, here they were, London commuters crouched under armpits, hanging from safety rails; while others sat rigidly, heads buried in the pages of their newspapers.
‘Open or wrapped, luv?’ chirped O’Singh, in a falsetto, Cockney accent. The academic was assuming the guise of a fish and chip shop assistant offering the customer, as they do, input into the way they would like their fishy repast packaged in newspaper. Professor Breville O’Singh was a man for making connections and making them verbal.
