If only she was reading this...

I was on a bus today - on my way back from Oxford. The bus had its usual compliment of passengers - divorcing couples, a nun with a guitar, a sick child travelling to get a kidney transplant (oh, wait - that's disaster movies). Well, it did have a very annoying guy, loudly sharing his personal life with everyone, the by-product of a mobile phone call he was engaged in. But to top it all, we had a woman who was coughing her guts up in the most violent way imaginable.

And when I say violent, I really mean it. Her whole body was convulsing and she was coughing so loudly, it was frightening pensioners on the pavement outside. I really believed that she was going to cough her lungs right out of her mouth and onto the floor of the bus. I had this mental image of her backing her way off the bus, dragging her lungs along the floor, still connected to her mouth by her trachea.

Now, I am genuinely sympathetic to anyone afflicted with a cough. Especially one as bad as this. However, the reason why the veins in my temple were throbbing so badly was that she felt it was unnecessary to cover her mouth at any time during this fit. This cough was not hers alone - it belonged to us all. She wanted to share it with everyone (in more ways than one). Charming!

Of course, being a british bus, everyone just sat there shifting uneasily in their seats, including the student who was sitting directly in front of her (such a wonderful display of british stoicism - he probably had to de-glue his hair when he got home). No one said a thing. I am sure we were all thinking the same thing. How does someone have such poor manners and so little consideration for those around them that they would fail to cover their mouth? Has she never seen the posters - which have been around for longer than she has - advising people to cover their big fat germ-spewing mouths when they cough? Unbelievable. Well, actually, quite believable. These people are everywhere these days.