Rapunzel on the underground

Making eye contact on the tube isn’t really the done thing. It might be interpreted as one of two extremes: threatening or flirtatious, so normally I stick to the furtive glances over my Evening Standard, or to just keeping my eyes to the floor. I had stolen a glance at the lady sitting opposite me this morning: she was wearing strange cat-eyed spectacles that came up to sparkly points, and was chatting to her friend in a rather alluring New York accent. Sly glance at her face, eyes down, glance at her friend, eyes back to the floor. I had also noticed (after the glasses and the accent) that she had rather long hair. Eyes back down to her feet, I slowly realised that I was still looking at her hair… And now I followed the brown locks back up on to her lap and then back up beyond her glasses to her head. I have never seen someone who wasn’t an animated character with hair that long, and in an unusual attempt at being more extroverted that the tube makes me want to be I told her (looking through her glasses into her eyes, rather than at her feet and the tips or her tresses) that her hair was really incredible. She smiled; it clearly wasn’t the first time someone had told her so.

How long had it taken to grow, have you ever cut it? 10 years, from shoulder length. Will you ever cut it? I have a twin sister and I can’t cut mine until she cuts hers… Somewhere in New York there are identical twins walking around with their hair sweeping the pavement. But upon further questioning she also admitted that it was not just the competition that kept her hair long, she also said that there is a lot of pressure to keep it long, mostly from strange men. Now I worried a little that maybe she did not remind me of a fairy tale but of a poem, that like Porphyria she might have the long strand wound three times around her neck…

We smiled at each other and the conversation ended. I would have asked her more, would have asked her name even but the moment of silence lengthened and I was unwilling to continue my interrogation (int-hairo-gation) and my eyes went back to the floor. I wonder how many things I could learn if I made it a rule to make conversation on the underground?