So Utterly Utterly Un-pretty

Seating for one

Sometimes I cannot understand as I notice that people who get on the trams, trains, metro or buses in Amsterdam always want to occupy the space meant for two persons.

Rarely, have I seen anyone put their bags on their laps, it is an automatic act of sitting down with your hand placing your bag immediately on the seat beside you – other passengers have to ask to be seated and many are not bold enough to obtain these seats from the menacing occupiers.

I have seen instances where the transport police have pulled people off the metro for acquiring more real-estate than their backsides require; I believe I wrote about backsides not long ago.

Builder’s crack

However, too many times I have been assaulted by the view of “builder’s crack” in public transport, in the supermarket, in restaurants and just walking down the streets – “ladies” if that description applies wearing trendy clothes showing off bits of the backside that should be under wraps.

This is not to talk of the additional exposure of flesh sagging out of the midriff protruding due to overly-tight tops and ill-fitting clothes – It is, O! So un-pretty.

In fact, a black-cab driver opined that when he was a young man you really had to be quite close to the lady in question, and close was like betrothed if not married to see that much flesh on a lady. Now, it is all for show and darn not appealing.

Unruly and rotten girls

Just as I got onto the tram the other evening, 5 girls with the sophistication of the cross between a tramp and a street-walker, speaking at the top of their voices with the decorum of a disturbed banshee could not find a way to sit in the seats properly – they had their knees and feet in the aisle that it was literally an obstacle course to get through.

Everyone had to brush past them and it all attracted a bit of rancour, you only had to look at them; hardly 15, with a waywardness that would make Jezebel of old look like a lovable, grinning piccaninny – then the piercings; through the tongue, the upper lip, the nose and forget the number through the ear lobes – they could as well be bridesmaids to the god of metal.

Looking nice yet so un-nice, looking chic but uncultured, looking at you and really looking so utterly, utterly unpretty – we were all glad when they all got off.