The truth about obstacles

Move, I'm gay!

‘Excuse me, please.’ The words I dread to hear and hate even more to say. I can’t stand to be in anybody’s way and I’d prefer to spare the embarrassment of any human obstacles blocking my path too. I had it drilled into me fairly young that being in someone’s way was rude – sometimes when I close my eyes, I can feel my mum’s hand on my shoulder gently manoeuvring me out of somebody’s path in the big Asda.

As a result, as an adult, I have a sixth sense about being in somebody’s way. I can feel the temperature change, deep within me, when I’m taking up space I shouldn’t be. (It’s is not lost on me that this may be, in part, due to a hyper sensitivity to potential threats given my sexuality and the fact that I breathe gay.) I practically glue myself to walls and spend as little time as possible dithering. And if I stop dead in a doorway then I must actually be dead, for nothing short of sudden expiration would have me unwittingly blocking an exit.

Not everyone is the same. It’s not the end of the world. You have to accept it, at least externally. You don’t own the place, and unless you’re an ambulance or a rare Morden train on the Charing Cross branch, your destination is no more important than anybody else’s.

But sometimes I do wonder, when someone leisurely comes to a standstill at the top of an escalator or searches through their pockets for their payment card at a train barrier, how luxurious it must feel to have no concept of other people around you, to breeze about in a bubble, where other souls are merely scenery. It goes without saying, perhaps, that posher people tend to be the worst offenders – used to owning not just the ground they walk on but the time and patience of everyone around them, maybe – but a lack of self-awareness or respect for personal space is not exclusive to the silver spoon brigade. Sometimes I envy them, sometimes I find their spatial cluelessness endearing, and sometimes I want to break a plank of wood in half and roar like the Hulk so they leap out of my way in fright.

To celebrate the art of being a human obstacle, I now present my ranking of the most annoying ways to be in someone else’s road.

1. Sitting at the bar