IT WAS when a sudden jerk delivered my nose into the armpit of another man that I rued two things. The first was the lack of a law compelling all men in Great Britain to shower and use underarm deodorant before going to work in the morning.

And the second was the lack of a law compelling all train companies in Great Britain not to be absolutely bobbins when it’s a bit chilly out.

I apologised to the man, although, quite frankly, he should have apologised to me and everybody else within sniffing distance. A bing-bong bing-bonged, followed by a moment of crackle, and then the tones of a man who regularly does this, but has never been on a training course to do this. “Mumble mumble adverse weather conditions mumble mumble severe disruption mumble mumble more information.”

I translated the announcement, the gist of which was that the train company had not anticipated cold weather in February and how could we possibly expect it to get all its trains to work and honestly I should count myself lucky to be on this train.

But the announcement was not needed. We were all very aware of the situation. Two train-loads of people were on one load of train owing to a cancellation of the previous train. It was an intimate business, I can tell you.

The people with seats were maintaining a lack of eye contact with those standing. Partly this was a sense of embarrassment – a form of survivor’s guilt, perhaps – but mostly because it is difficult to look people in the eye when one’s line of sight is blocked by a stranger’s crotch six inches away.

And yet, crowded as it was, there were not enough people to make it unnecessary to grip onto a safety rail. However there were too many people to make it possible for everybody to grip a safety rail. It was the opposite of Goldilocks’ porridge. One sudden brake, and the carriage would have looked like a Guess Who? board after an earthquake.

Now I understand that this country is not Sweden or Norway, where heavy snow is constant over winter, and where it makes sense to spend vast amounts of money on making sure that people can commute without having to qualify for the Winter Olympics. We don’t have that much snow in this country, especially these days.

But this is a Northern European country. Between November and March it can be quite brisk out there. Sometimes you might even need a coat, unless you are a person in your twenties on a night out in a northern city. And sometimes the ground can get a little icy. Sometimes, in fact, it even snows. This is something that we can expect from winter.

And yet, our train companies are somehow allowed to get away with the fact that their rolling stock and infrastructure fail when the temperature drops to a level that is within the normal range of climate of this country.

They cannot be blamed for the weather, but they can be blamed for lack of preparedness. I work in newspapers. You’ve probably noticed. If there were a disaster out of my control that seriously compromised the production of the newspaper I make, I would fight fires and do what I could to get the paper out.

After that, my boss would say, “Well done. You rose to the occasion beautifully, Bainbridge. Have a bun. No, not one of the nice ones. Now, what plans do you have to make sure that, if this unexpected disaster happened again, we would get the paper out smoothly?”

And if this unexpected disaster happened again, and the production of the paper were similarly compromised, I would be out on my ear or bottom depending on how I landed. Doubtless you would find yourself in a similar position in your own job.

But if I were sacked and found myself working for a train company, the first thing I would do is ensure the trains worked even if the tracks were a bit frosty first thing. I would make sure that my trains worked ESPECIALLY during the times that it’s more dangerous for people to be travelling on the roads.

In short, I would ensure that only a shower of flaming meteors would prevent my trains from getting from A to B Parkway (that’s several miles from B).

And after that I would put a Flaming Meteors Protocol in place. And ban people without deodorant.

I SPEND far too much of my life sitting down and staring at a screen, so I decided to go to the cinema, because it’s good to get out of your comfort zone occasionally.

For the record, it was Black Panther I went to see, partly because I had heard it was good, but mostly so that I could indulge in one of my favourite activities – laughing at the people who leave before the mid-credits and end-credits scenes of Marvel movies. These are like people who leave five minutes before the end of a play, if such people even exist.

I chose to go alone, because nobody could – or, more likely, would – go with me. Going to the cinema alone is great, because you get to choose exactly which snacks you want to buy without engaging in serious and rancorous negotiations, and you get a full large drink to yourself, which is a brilliant move when you are forced to sit in one place for two and a half hours.

Anyway, I decided to go to an arthouse cinema, because I thought it would make me feel more grown-up about going to see a film about a man who dresses up in a bullet-proof panther suit and flies spaceships in a society where women get to do cool stuff without anybody commenting on it. Unbelievable.

I fetched up at the box office and confidently asked for one ticket to see Black Panther.

“Just one?” asked the man behind the counter, impertinently, in my view. I tried not to look hurt. “Yes, just one,” I said.

“Where would you like to sit?” he asked, “Front, middle, or back?” “Back,” I said. It’s the best place to sit.

“Just one person, back row?” confirmed the box office man. I took my ticket and marched off, like a perfectly normal solo cinemagoer. After all, it wasn’t as if anybody knew me there.

I walked straight into a couple of friends of my late mother. They greeted me warmly while looking over my shoulder to see with whom I was visiting the cinema. “I’m on my own,” I explained. They looked at my sympathetically. “I do it quite a lot!” I explained. Somehow that did not reduce the intensity of their sympathetic glare.

“What are you seeing? We’ve been to see The Shape Of Water,” they asked.

“Black Panther.”

They recoiled briefly, as one would when confronted by the 46-year-old son of a much-missed friend who is openly going to see what is essentially a child’s film without any of his own children, but recovered, wished me well, and sent me on my way.

Armed with a bucket of cola, I approached the usherette, who checked my ticket and told me I was sitting on seat 26 of the back row. This appeared to be non-negotiable, so I went to the back row…

Come with me now as I explain my route to my seat. First I disrupt a group of friends, if you can imagine such a concept, sitting in the five seats nearest the aisle, all of whom do that thing with their legs instead of standing up. Then I walk past 10 empty seats, before meeting a young and nervous-looking woman, who is sitting in seat 25.

My allocated place is next to hers, then beyond mine are another nine or 10 vacant seats. Ideally I would sit in part of the empty section, and not next to this nervous-looking woman. But my ticket states I must sit in seat 26, for which I am grateful to Box Office Man.

I compromise by sitting in such a way that I leave about half of my seat unoccupied, while slurping through a straw. Then Nervous-looking Woman’s boyfriend appears, sitting in seat 24. If I move now, what message does that send?

The lights go down. There is nobody in seats 27-36. I smoothly shimmy into seat 27. It’s all going to be OK. I even spread out a bit, like the worst man on a bus.

And then a man and woman approach me from the left. They’re in seats 27 and 28, as they point out to me.

So I return to seat 26, sitting on the back row, between two young couples, all of whom think I am a creep and/or idiot, watching a film that does not require absolute concentration at all times…

This is why I like my comfort zone.

THERE is a homeless man who sits on the pavement outside the shop near my office where I usually buy my lunch and dinner. I don’t think it is actually the same man each time. He would get piles if it were.

In my head I imagine a sort of clocking-on/clocking-off system, as in those Looney Tunes cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the sheepdog. Perhaps there is some sort of rota, operated and enforced by a homeless tribunal, a bit like the way buskers are sometimes allocated pitches.

The point is, there is always somebody there, asking politely for spare change, and wishing a genuine nice afternoon/evening to those who hand over a few coins, and wishing a sarcastic nice afternoon/evening to those who do not.

I receive the sarcastic wish more often than not. This is because I don’t carry much change around with me. I don’t want you to think I am like the Prince of Wales and do not carry cash for regal motives – I suspect he is tired of being reminded that he is not the King yet, and avoids using stamps for similar reasons.

Nor that I shun shrapnel because it ruins the line of my trousers. Frankly, the line of my trousers is already ruined by my legs.

It is because everything I buy these days costs more than a pound – thanks, Brexinflation – which means that I pay for virtually everything using my card. And any change I have has usually been snaffled by other homeless people I have come across on my way to work.

Besides, if I give money to the same homeless person every day, does that person then become officially a dependent of mine? Will he have a claim on part of my estate if I die intestate? There are so many legal questions. I can’t believe that I have to make a will because of this.

So lack of change has made me hard-hearted. I now walk past homeless people without giving them a glance, ignoring their pleas. I am sure I am not the only one, which is a terrible position to be in. It’s not good for the potential donor and even worse for the homeless person.

So homeless people need to get their act together. Firstly, what they need is some sort of network whereby people who have already given away their change are not later harassed.

Maybe we people with homes should wear electronic tags, or have a hand stamp. Then, when a homeless person sees a person with a roof, they can check before asking for cash. That would cut down the number of pointlessly repeated requests, which merely build up tolerance in the roofed, and in the long term could increase the amount of money people give to the homeless.

Secondly, the homeless need to find a way of taking micropayments from contactless cards. Perhaps they could have a price list, and we could choose whether we want to give the amount of cash for, say, a cup of coffee, or a week’s worth of food for the homeless person’s dog. Then we could tap our card on the device and it would eliminate the need for spare change.

The important thing is that the homeless become much more creative in their attempts to relieve people with roofs of their cash, whether that’s with an app, or some sort of crowdfunding initiative. It’s 2018, the age of the gig economy!

Or, you know, the government could do its job properly. It could stop chucking money away on Brexit – that fact-defying project that makes most people poorer just so that we don’t have to have shops selling Nutella with Polish labels – and spend it on the NHS and social care.

It could spend our cash on fixing the holes in the safety net that these vulnerable people – people that you and I could become after a run of bad luck – have fallen through.

Because the government could virtually eradicate homelessness. It did it before from the late nineties, back in the good old days when we thought homelessness was not a price we would willingly pay for a cut in taxes and public spending.

It could cut drug-related crime overnight by just supporting people until they find work and a home, instead of saving a penny today and spending a pound tomorrow. Or making each of us hand over our spare change. Which we haven’t got.

MY mother was a wise woman and I live much of my life according to her advice. For instance, I avoid running with scissors, to the extent that when I have gone out for one of my runs I have never taken scissors with me.

I always wear clean underwear in case I am in an accident. I always say “thank you” to bus drivers in case I need one of them to wait for me at the stop and they will remember me as that nice polite man. Obviously, this has never happened, but I have faith that one day it will.

And she told me never to geg in on other people’s conversations. “Geg in”. It’s a Liverpool expression my mum used, the meaning of which you can probably gather from context.

The point is, I usually keep my nose out, despite great temptation. But sometimes I cannot help myself. This is a very rare occurrence, and only takes place when the people involved in the conversation are saying something so stupid or objectionable that the only responsible course of action is to geg in, and geg in hard.

And it has happened to me twice this week. The first time was on a train. It was late and I was tired, so my resistance was down. Across the aisle from me were three men in their mid-30s to early-40s who were explaining Star Wars to each other in tones which suggested a) deep and long-lived familiarity with the subject; and b) deep and recent familiarity with scrumpy.

However, they could only demonstrate the latter. They were loud and they were sure of themselves and they were wrong. They announced to the carriage that the first Star Wars film was always Episode 4, that The Last Jedi was the worst Star Wars film ever, and that Revenge Of The Sith was the second best Star Wars film.

These are all completely untrue. I am only a vague Star Wars fan, and even I knew they were talking absolute nonsense. I put my anti-drivel earphones in, but I could not turn up the volume high enough to drown out the levels of rubbish they were spewing. My levels of rage were building…

Eventually one got off and the other two continued talking in lower tones. They moved away from the subject of Star Wars and on to “this TV series with the man from Miranda, who plays the Devil, who gets fed up being the king of Hell, so he moves to LA and becomes a detective.”

“Ooh, that sounds interesting,” said the other man. “What’s it called?”

“Oh, I’m trying to think,” said the other man. “Erm… Erm…”

This is none of my business, I thought. Stay out of it. He’ll get it…

“Erm… Erm… Oh, I know. Luther!” he said.

I yanked out my earphones with a pop. “LUCIFER!” I shouted.

They were shaken. The whole carriage was shaken, I expect, by the sound of a man crying out the name of the Devil. “Yeah, all right, mate,” said the Luther-idiot. “Calm down.” I flushed, shoved my earphones in, and stared at the floor for the rest of the journey. Mum was right. I would never do this again…

Two days later, I had finished a long shift making a newspaper and was on my way home. It was 10.30 and I needed milk, so I called in at a small branch of a large retailer.

There were three checkout staff chatting among themselves, so I decided not to bother them and used the self-checkout. It took a while because of improvements to the system which make things slower, and I tuned into their conversation.

They were talking about newspapers and journalism in general. And then one of them, a young man, said: “Yeah, well, all journalists are…” and then a word you wouldn’t hear on Cbeebies.

I forgot my promise, and marched over to him. “Two things, pal,” I said. “First, swearing in front of customers is unprofessional. And second, if you’re going to slag off journalists, try not to do it in front of somebody who’s just slogged his guts out for nine hours making a newspaper.”

I had stood up for my profession, my friends, and myself. My heart was racing, my blood pumping. I felt empowered, readers.

Then I turned on my heel and strode away with purpose. Straight into a stack of shopping baskets.

Mum was right. Never geg in.