Book

While traveling on public transport, I look up and catch the brief smile of recognition from someone who is reading the same book as me.

I smile back.

If I were Italian or French or Spanish or American or almost any other nationality, I would probably take the opportunity to engage in a long literary discussion about the book, we would discover how similar our minds were, we would go for coffee and then an inevitably brief but torrid affair would follow.

I am British. I say nothing and return to my book.