WAS the victim, this morning, of serious breach of train etiquette by person unknown, possibly making a one-off journey or on start of commuting career.

Had secured window seat in right carriage to eye up blond athletic man from Hassocks, who in due course came to take up seat diagonally opposite from own. Unfortunately, his arrival coincided with said prrson unknown who occupied seat next to me.

While I tried to glance beguilingly at Hassocks from over the top of neatly-folded paper, Unknown started to shake open numerous sections of Telegraph as if he were a magician producing handkerchief from hat.

Expanded appointments section was stretched out, covering width of Unknown's full arm span and obscuring view of own paper and, more importantly, of Hassocks.

Unknown seemed totally oblivious to his invasion (or rather take-over) of my space and ignored own obvious claustrophobia at being buried in pages of his paper.

Attempts to turn pages of own paper fell on blind eyes, though he continued every now and then to execute a supreme display of aerobic activity which took him from business to arts section and arts to features.

At one point during the page-turning exercise routine, I managed to catch a glimpse of Hassocks who appeared mildly amused by my obvious discomfort but did offer a conciliatory wink of support.

No doubt, when travelling public began making daily forays to the capital, the carriages were designed so that first class had ample space to turn the pages of broadsheets, while the great unread were relegated to confined spaces where, if they could read, would not attempt more than a few lines of tabloid.

But, with the introduction of new sardine-style carriages, there has evolved an unspoken set of rules concerning method of paper reading. These constitute: scanning centre pages while not actually opening paper more than a couple of inches; then, on finding something of interest, turning paper away from direction of neighbour, holding if above level of person opposite and in a matter of seconds opening, turning, refolding and bringing it back to reading position, without having disturbed precious air space of others.

Unknown, being a novice, has not mastered even stage one of this paper-reading procedure and continues to enjoy own paper while entirely preventing self from doing the same.

By Three Bridges, I'd given up and resigned self to looking out of the window, through tiny crack afforded between edge of Unknown's paper and edge of upholstery.

Hassocks then decided to come to my rescue, leaning forward and studying article on back of Unknown's paper, with acute interest, while muttering "Hmmm, that's interesting", "I didn't know that", "I can't believe that" and other such comments.

Taking my cue, I, too, turned my head from the window and began to read the share index in the right hand page of U's paper. "Dow Jones up - well I never", "Bradford and Bingley down one and a quarter - who'd have thought it" I muttered.

Success! Unknown became increasingly irritated and began slowly withdrawing his paper to within the confines of his own air space.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.