So I was standing on a blissfully unpacked Embankment tube station platform this evening. I had put my handbag and a carrier bag on one of the grey steel seats affixed to the wall and I had half turned away for a moment and was looking at my phone.
"Excuse me," said the geeky looking gentleman who was sitting on a separate bank of seats about ten feet further down the platform. I braced myself for something unpleasant. I had no idea what he was going to say, but I was fairly confident that I might need to be braced. I smiled at him. He gestured at my belongings on the seat behind me.
"One of those little tube mice has just crawled into your handbag," he said. "If you have any food in there, you might want to discard it."
"Ooh!" I said, excitedly. I absolutely love the little tube mice, and sure enough, when I turned around, there it was, sticking its little head out of my green leatherette bag and wiggling its whiskers. I took a step towards it and it quickly scurried up, over and down, across the floor and down onto the tracks in a jiffy. The excitement was all over far too quickly.
Still, even though I am fond of little tube mice, and even though I'd clearly seen it vacate my bag and scuttle away, I still felt a bit ginger as I picked up my bags when the tube arrived, and even now, when I think about it, I get a little tingle about my ankles as if a creature may be about to shoot up my leg. Odd, the way one's mind works, innit?
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