These days, every modern mobile phone has music playing capabilities. There is no better way to appreciate music than through a tiny mobile phone speaker. You will find that you can improve your phone’s bass reproduction by turning up the volume as much as possible.
Most people on public transport are music lovers and will therefore be delighted to participate in your public music sharing. For this reason, it is certainly unnecessary to invest in a pair of decent headphones.
When fortunate enough to bag a seat on a train or bus, you should pretend to be asleep or so utterly engrossed in your book/newspaper that you fail to notice the standing elderly people and heavily pregnant women.
If you do notice, you should not make eye contact under any circumstances. If you don’t make eye contact they won’t know that you’ve noticed them, thus excusing you from needing to feel guilty.
Eventually, some other kind-hearted soul might give up their seat. If this happens, you may feel suitably smug that you have kept your seat and no longer need to feel guilty.
When you spot an empty seat on a train, in order to rightfully claim it you must move as close to the arriving train doors as possible. You must judge the exact momentum of the train to stand in exactly the right place as it stops.
When the doors open you should immediately and confidently stride towards the seat. When seats are at stake, you are exempt from letting people off the train first.
If anyone else reaches the seat first, you must glare at the person in a mixture of despair and annoyance. Try to hide the psychopathic voice in your head saying ‘That seat was mine. MINE I TELL YOU. You will die in a horrific accident involving a lorry and a rusty fork.’
It is clearly totally unexpected that a train will begin to move once the doors have closed. For this reason, there is no reason to hold on to anything.
Instead, you should perform one of two acrobatic routines when the train starts to move:
1) The ‘off-balance tap dancing shuffle’ along the train gangway.
Or
2) The ‘nearly lost my balance but managed to grab a support bar whilst punching the person next to me in the face’ manoeuvre.
You should aim to kick or tread on at least one person’s foot along the way.
When arriving at the ticket barriers in a station, you should approach the front of the queue, then stop to search for your ticket/oyster card in your stupidly large bag or deep pockets.
You should do this regardless of how much time you spent motionless on the train or going up and down escalators.
It is also quite normal to scrunch up the ticket in said bag/pocket so even when it is found, it will be rejected by the machine.
(Thanks to Wendy for the tip)
When reading a newspaper on public transport of any sort, you should ensure that the paper occupies at least the space of an extra, fully grown adult. You needn’t worry about the people contorting their spine around you, they can read the paper too, for free – the cheapskates!
When faced with an inconveniently long queue of people waiting for a train, you should attempt to creep along the outside of the queue when people are not looking directly at you, ultimately ending up at the front of the queue.
For extra bravery, you can attempt to stand on the wrong side of the ‘yellow line of death’. This will make the waiting commuters behind you very grateful for protecting them from the high-speed rolling lump of metal merely inches away from your face.
If anyone attempts to block your movement to the front, move along to the next door and repeat or push them out the way when the train stops and board before them regardless.
(Thanks to Alex for the tip)