Street eating

Extraordinary feature on the Today programme this morning that included the bonkers Spectator agony aunt, Mary Killen . Apparently, eating in the street is a bad thing to do because it makes other people "feel sick and worry that you might get indigestion". I positively HEART the poshness of this, and the fact that she wasn't able to say, "I don't like seeing people stuff their faces as they walk down the street, with mayonnaise smeared round the edges of their mouths and bread crumbs stuck in the folds of their clothing, and I just damn well wish they'd go somewhere else and do it in private where I don't have to see them," which is surely what she meant.

I don't really mind that so much (which is a surprise, given my fundamentally intolerant and fascistic attitude to other peoples' eating habits), but as I was reminded yesterday, what I DO mind, more than virtually ANYTHING, is people in noodle bars who want to put their coats/bags/wet umbrellas on the bit of bench where I happen to be sitting. This happened to me recently in Wagamama, and I spent a rather tense hour edging said difficult bag away from me, all the time feeling the tension build within me. When it happened last night, Tolerant Boyfriend was able to dissuade me from the torrents of abuse that he could no doubt see were about to break loose. Why does this trouble me so much? I don't know. Perhaps I just don't like being touched by strangers, or -- more particularly -- strangers' coats and bags. Oh what a weird OCD thing to be worried about.