Impatience is a Birch Tree

Well, who'd have thought it - I've just discovered I'm actually too small for train seats. I'm sitting on a Virgin Train (going to Lancashire since you ask) and if I put my laptop on the table I can't reach it to type whilst sitting back against the chair... when in the hell did this happen?

I've now got the laptop on my lap, meaning that I'm typing a bit like a Tyrannosaurus Rex with my elbows in my armpits. Obviously I could shuffle forward so that I can reach the laptop but then I'm not really getting the full feel of my seat comfort and I paid good money for this chair.

Surely no one is big enough that this chair is the proper size for them? What the hell's going to happen on the way back where I've booked First Class? Is it possible to get lost in a train seat? I don't want to spend the rest of my life mopping up the crumbs from commuters' cucumber sandwiches as I wander in a desert of leather seating, eternally condemned to a life en route to Penrith. Do they have leather seating in First Class? Because I really don't want to get stuck on velour, or that weird 'it would be carpet if it were on the floor but it's masquerading as chair fabric' stuff.

I'm sure I haven't always been this small, in fact, I never really feel very small compared to other people when I'm around them but then every now and again something like this happens and it freaks me out. It's like finding out one day that all this time you've been using a circus mirror and that actually you're a Borrower but no one wanted to tell you in case you cried.

Is everyone else getting bigger? Maybe this is a clear example of POLITICALLY CORRECTNESS GONE MAD where we're trying to cater for massive people on trains to the extent where smaller folk like myself are havign to ask for booster seats to see out the window. If it is that people are getting bigger would it be possible for them to stop? It's just that the only way I can sit comfortably in my chair and get some work done would be to sit cross legged in the chair - which I can comfortably do (I just checked) - and I'm sure that's -

a) Not normal for a fully grown adult
b) Going to get me a penalty for putting my feet on the chair.

If I were to get a penalty it would inevitably lead to an argument with the guard over the practicality of the seating arrangement. How do you explain to someone that you were forced to defile their mode of transport because they'd put the cushions on steroids and you were having trouble staying afloat?

I'm not sure what to do now... I'm a bit worried I'm too small. None of the other people on the train seem to be having any trouble. I don't want to have to ask them for their vital statistics in order to assess the situation but if I come across anything else today that poses a problem I'm going to kick off. I will be phoning whoever ran the census and checking exactly where I stand in terms of National average size. Then I'll be writing to Branson and telling him to sort his seats out as I'm now feeling gruimpy and insecure over my diminshed stature. Stupid train.