The Man with the High-Vis Jacket

The tube is a cross section of society, specially selected and placed on display on the carpet-print seats. Like a box of biscuits, or crackers for cheese. More Tesco finest than M&S. Whole grain people and Cream Cracker people. Business men, clean and sharp as water biscuits. Some people crumbling. 

Some broken.

Perhaps my digressive, biscuity observations are the fruit of an empty stomach.

The tube is a plastic fish tank, hurtling through dark tunnels, lighting them up with its aquarium light, filled with bewildered, colourful fish, blank eyes perhaps observing, perhaps not.

Mine are. I’m observing a man in a grey suit and odd socks, though not odd enough that he worried about wearing them to work. He’s doing something on his smart phone, caressing the screen carefully, delicately, with a fingertip. Staring at it intensely. As though stroking a very beloved pet mouse.

I’m observing a middle aged woman reading a book I can’t see the title of, wearing nail polish I couldn’t quite describe the colour of. Sewer rat grey? Wouldn’t sell very well. The woman next to her has hair the colour of overripe cherries, but flaming orange roots. Both of which are nice colours, of course. The overall effect, however, was even less pleasing than the sewer-rat-grey nails. Which, on reflection, were actually rather nice. They went well with their owner’s sludge-green trouser-suit.

But what I’m observing most of all is a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. Not because he’s a small Indian man in a maroon woolly hat and glasses. But because he was wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket.

It’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen him, though the first time, I suppose, I can’t have found him all that remarkable. I had assumed that he worked on a construction site, or was some kind of steward somewhere. Some profession that requires its workers to be highly visible, for safety, or to lend them some semblance of authority.

But now, looking at him again, it didn’t quite fit. It looked more like a costume than a uniform, as though he was an actor I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief for, or a spy I was beginning to suspect. He’s sitting opposite me on the tube with a slight smile, eyes glazed over by his glasses. I take a closer look at his jacket. The acerbic, highlighter yellow is a little grubby, the reflective strips ever so slightly frayed. There are no markings or labels to suggest he belongs to any kind of association or enterprise. His shoes are simple, battered, brown leather lace-ups. Not protective or functional. He doesn't work in construction or stewarding or ticketing, as I'd imagined.

No. He must just wear the jacket because he wants to. Because he likes it. Perhaps he discovered that wearing a high-vis jacket would give him some unspoken authority over others, some fluorescent right that no-one else had, a neon permit to go places he shouldn’t. Maybe he wandered into places for free, skipped queues, opened doors with ‘Private’ signs, moved things, stole things, graffiti’d walls and climbed onto rooftops to look down on the city, smiling slightly, eyes glazed over by his glasses.

Or maybe he's a lollipop man.