Let’s face it, the London underground is not exactly an ideal place for dating. Granted, you might have people in your armpits and between your legs during rush hour, but most of them tend to be engaged in some sort of exercise in escapism to forget that they’re there. They’re hooked up to an iPod, stuck in a book or, best of all, hidden behind a newspaper which covers their face completely and shuts them off from all the other grumpy, sweaty commuters for the duration of their trip.

Bitter Betty breached Tube etiquette. Photo Credit: Morade Azzouz

Even those who don’t hide behind their literature seem to be afraid of eye contact. Faced with each other, tube travellers appear to enter a meditative state of complete oblivion to the people around them.

I often get away with a staring people for ages without them noticing. Yet I have never been brave enough to keep looking if they looked back. With the exception of a middle aged man who once decided to rub something warm and hard of his up against my backside on a Tuesday morning, I have not yet had a tube romance.

That was until last Saturday.

I am not sure if it was the scar on his forehead that caught my attention, or if it was the pink booklet titled “The Romantic Poets”. He was hot in a rough kind of way with strong cheekbones, long, unruly black hair and this mesmerising scar that reminded me most of all of Harry Potter. He seemed out of this world. And he was reading romantic poetry.

I secretly watched him all the way from King’s Cross to Kentish Town, carefully lowering my gaze every time he looked up at me. Silly, I thought. But now the smile on his face indicated that he was watching me back. We kept playing this game for another five minutes, his brown eyes moving swiftly from his book to my eyes and back again.

Every time our eyes met, I felt a spark of excitement in my stomach and a wave of embarrassment which made my eyes flee to the nearest advertisement or shoe or whatever I could pretend to be interested in.

I finally just held his glance. And he did the same. Then there was a long, awkward moment, in which I forced myself to keep looking and smiling whilst my head turned fabulously purplish-pink—the colour of his poetry book, which he handed to me as he got up and left. Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge—with a phone number scribbled on the inside.

Watch this space.

Catch up with all of Betty’s observations on being Single in the Foreign City:
Bitter Betty and the online dating question
Bitter Betty goes speed dating
Bitter Betty and the Christmas conundrum
Bitter Betty and the ill-fated literary love
Bitter Betty and the perfect man

Related Posts:

• April 5, 2010 -- Bitter Betty and the Brazilian
• February 8, 2010 -- Bitter Betty and the online dating question
• January 31, 2010 -- Bitter Betty and the perfect man
• January 25, 2010 -- Bitter Betty and the ill-fated literary love