The double-decker

We all know that the population is ever increasing, not only in number but also (at least in the Western world) in girth. Indeed, like me I suspect you have been reading and watching politicians ponder, with some regularity, the question of how to reduce the size of the population’s girth. Journalists too seem to delight in the topic, with one Spectator journalist recently starting a debate about whether we should return to the days of teasing overweight people by calling them “Fatties” (all for their own good of course).

Personally, I don’t think that teasing grossly overweight people is the way to solve the problem. I’m also not sure that Britain’s latest solution (of hiring a Strictly Come Dancing “star” as the head of campaign to get Britain to dance off its fat) is going to yield results. However, it might be a very pleasant surprise for British teens to learn that Tango is a dance, and not just a saccharine orange flavoured soft-drink.

At the same time as the government is trying to deal with these issues of demographic diameter, I find myself on a daily basis grappling with how these grossly overweight people fit within our complex rules of etiquette. These are rules that have been devised over many years, during a time when a much slimmer population was the norm.

This difficult issue of how one treats a grossly overweight person (or double-decker) in accordance with these rules of etiquette has been particularly troubling me in relation to public transport, following an incident on the bus coming home on Friday.

I regularly catch the double-decker bus home from work. Sadly, so do many other City workers, and as a result the bus is usually packed. On this day, I mounted the bus and noted that the seats right at its rear were vacant. This is a rare find. I trotted to the back of the bus and sat down, turned on my iPod and picked up the London Lite that someone had left on the seat next me. Even with the distractions of Kings of Leon shouting about sex and fire in my ears and salacious gossip about Jordan and Pete in the paper, I could hear a loud groan from a woman who then said, very loudly, “well, since no one is going to stand up to offer me their seat, I guess I’ll have to sit at the back of the bus”. She was American, of course. All the British and Australians understand that when in a bus, one pretends one is the only person in that bus, and does not acknowledge the strangers in the bus, let alone talk to them.

I was therefore startled to hear this woman addressing the whole bus. I looked up to see a double-decker woman hobbling up the isle. She eased her bulk down next to me with a sigh of relief. It was difficult to tell the age of this woman – at a guess I would say no more than 55. She was grossly overweight; so much so that as she sat down next to me, part of her thigh oozed onto my seat, meaning I could feel the heat of her enormous thigh pressing against mine for the entire journey. It was far less pleasant than when the only thing on that seat had been the London Lite.

A much slimmer friend of the double-decker sat opposite her. The double-decker then proceeded loudly to complain to her friend that it was very rude that none of those at the front of the bus had stood up to offer her their seats. She said words to the effect that, because of her size, it was very difficult for her to walk all the way to the back of the bus, and surely everyone could see that. I assume, from that comment, that her only “disability”, so to speak, was her size.

I know that some grossly overweight people are not responsible for their misfortune; they may have glandular problems or illnesses that lead to their enormous girth. This, however, did not appear to be one of those people. She loudly bored her friend and everyone else on the bus with a long and loud monologue about how unpleasant the heat was, and that she was trying to lose weight but simply couldn’t possibly lose any weight because in this humidity she simply had to eat hundreds of “sweets” during the day just to cope. She also described those “sweets”, such as the ice cream, chocolate cake and lollies.

I then wondered: if her “disability” is her weight, and that weight is caused by her diet, is that a disability entitling her to expect others to relinquish their seats on the bus? Or, is it more akin to, say, a woman choosing to wear ridiculous stilettos, making it difficult for her to walk, and expecting someone to relinquish their seat for her?

I am a great believer that one must give up one’s seat to people with physical disabilities, injuries, the elderly, frail and pregnant. However, now that our population is growing in girth, is a new category of disability being a double-decker?