That pregnant pause

Giving up my seat is always something I do reluctantly - particularly when I've only just got on the train and I'm facing a good hour or more standing wedged in a noisy vestibule. These days I've grown hardened to overcrowded trains so it has to be someone pretty special to make me want to stand up and say those magic words: "Here, have my seat."

Pregnant women are always a tricky group. I remember the aggro my wife went through when pregnant commuting in and out of London when we lived there so I always feel sympathetic towards any woman forced to stand who's clearly up the Hilary Duff. But on the flip side, part of me thinks: if I can just avoid making eye contact with them, maybe someone else will give up their seat...maybe someone else will do the gentlemanly thing. No chance of that today, though.

Caught the 9.25am Chippenham-Paddington, the first cheapo service of the day. The platform at Chippenham was packed with families wanting to take a leisurely rail trip up to London with the kids - more fool them! Don't they know what it's like on First Great Western? - but when we all clambered aboard, it emerged pretty quickly in the chaotic melee that FGW had pulled its increasingly regular trick of failing to put out the seat reservations. The poor old families with their two or three little kids found their seats filled and grumpy commuter types unwilling to move.

Mental note: never take the kids on the train unless you really REALLY have to. It's never fun and it's never easy. Whatever FGW's summery advertising campaign says about jolly trips around the country, it's going to be like a cattle truck to Belsen. You have been warned.

Anyway, I managed to find a seat and settled down with the old laptop to do a spot of work when, on the periphery of my vision, I spotted the pregnant woman waddling towards me hunting for a seat.

But not just any pregnant women - she was super pregnant woman. In fact, it would have been harder to design a women better able to tug at the heart strings of a hardened First Great Western commuter. Not only was she pregnant but...she was holding a small baby in one arm and...wait for it...her other arm was just a stump! Yep, she seemed to have lost one arm from the elbow down and was desperately cradling a kid in the other.

Lord oh lordie, how could I refuse?

"Have my seat," I said magnanimously, then retreated to the vestibule to complete my journey in a petulant silence. Yep, that's about as pregnant as it gets...apart from actually having the baby in the carriage.

PS I used to work with a woman who made a point of standing on the London Underground and sticking her stomach out so that she looked pregnant in order to get a seat.

I quote the words of Jimmy Carr on the subject: "I'd rather see a pregnant woman standing up than a fat woman sitting down crying."