An urban moment

It's just before midnight. Woman No 1 must have got on the tube at Oxford Circus. She gets out a little black note book and starts sketching the men oppposite her. Woman No 2 (me) gets on at Tottenham Court Road (the next stop), sits next to Woman No 1, gets her notebook out and starts writing. Woman No 3 gets on at Holborn (the next stop), sits next to Woman No 2, gets her notebook out and starts writing. Sitting in the middle, Woman No 2 realises the oddity of the situation: three women looking very different but all in their 30s, sitting next to each other and furiously writing on their notebooks on a late night tube train.

Opposite two punk girls barely 20 and two Indian men in their 30s also realise the oddity of the situation and try not to smile....we are in London after all, human contact in the tube must be kept to a minimum.

At Bank (two stops after No 3 got on), No 3 nudges No2 and shows her what she's been writing. No 2 was thinking she was writing about No 1 but in fact it's about her. Having written about No 2 writing about the woman who's just sat next to her writing about her, she realised No 2 is writing about something else...about a man with a yearning look on his face. No 2 was writing about a scene she's just acted in her improvisation class. No2 is excited because she thinks she's just acted out the straight woman's Brokeback Mountain in the scene she was writing about.

It turns out No 3 was coming back from another improvisation class that night. They get talking. No 3 had watched, only weeks before, the theatre company No 2 is training with and loved them. They talk about theatre and writing for another three stops when No 3 gets off at Bethnal Green. No 1 has fallen asleep about Bank. No 2 keeps smiling all the way to Mile End (OK, only the next stop) and then home and can't sleep for ages with the excitement of that scene and the urban moment with No 3.

No 2 is happy. And who says London is a place for free but lonely people? It's hard to find people to connect with anywhere in the world - even if momentarily, even if with people you are unlikely to see ever again. At least in London you have lonely (or shall I say free?) enough people, even only few, to share those moments with.