Lost in the Crowd

An old Sudanese lady sat at the seat, shrouded in sandy brown and holding a gnarled stick.  In front of her, a richly dressed Caribbean woman who refused to touch any of the fixtures with her bare skin and held the rail with a shawl-covered hand.  On one side of me, a middle-aged skinhead with piercings healed over with time who held up a book but read the newspaper of the person in front.  On the other side, two Russian teenagers drinking lager from cans inside paper bags.  And over us all a man so tall that the back of his neck hovered uncomfortably just a few centimetres from the roof.  And no one noticed.