Oh yes! Elevators. Well spotted. I like to travel on public transport and on lifts in large buildings with my own army of short, wiry people with long bamboo canes. The traditional use of these armies in many parts of the world is to use the bamboo canes to herd people onto carriages when there is a large crush of bodies. My use, however, is simply to use the bamboo canes to bonk on the head those rude people who can't work out the knotty ethics of how to go through a door.

I must admit, if I can go on a little tangent, I don't know how my record with the whole giving-up-my-seat-for-the-elderly thing looks, though. I'm forever afraid of insulting somebody by offering to give my seat up to somebody still young enough to take offense at it. There is line there between somebody older than you but still certainly young enough to stand in an aisle and wouldn't like to think of themselves as old and somebody who would be grateful to have a seat made available for them. I admit freely that I lack confidence in knowing where that line is.

The world is a confronting and confusing place sometimes.
 

Can I add to this pregnant women? Several times I have struggled with the fat versus early (or late!!!) stages of pregnancy.
 

That's a tricky one too. Perhaps it should be polite to offer seats to fat people as well. That would remove the ‘are you pregnant or just fat?’ problem but it would then introduce the ‘exactly how fat is fat?’ problem analogous to the ‘how elderly is elderly?’ problem we were discussing above.

Oh sod it. Let's just to stay in our seat and glare with indignant, righteous horror at other passengers who don't offer theirs.