There is an order to what I did and the order matters.
The armrest went down first. That is the only part of it that was about getting my own space back, and it took about two seconds.
Everything after that was for him.
The jacket. The handbag flat on the seat so that it could be seen from the aisle. The book. The water on his tray, with the tray down, which does nothing for me at all and which took me four seconds and which I did because a pulled-down tray on an empty seat looks occupied from thirty feet away.
And the shoes.
I took my shoes off and put my feet in his footwell, and I have told that as the punchline, and what it actually is is a woman arranging a photograph.
Two seconds of taking my space back and forty-eight seconds of composition.
I was not reclaiming a seat. By the time I sat back I had built a thing for a man to walk into, and I knew what it would look like from the aisle, because I had checked.
