Why free newspapers are good, and why you should never add sugar to your drink!

Returning yesterday from a long day in London, I jumped on the 16:45 to Swansea for my trip back to Cardiff. I found a table seat in a busy commuter train, and was having a pleasant conversation while the guy on the opposite side of the table wrote his diary in long hand.

A chap comes in to the carriage, and wants the spare window seat next to the diarist/opposite me. The diarist gets up, and the chap dumps his briefcase and coat on the seat, and meal bag from the sandwich shop on the table. He gets in to his seat, sits down - and leans forward enough to dump his grande capucino over me/table.

Said coffee makes it way expressly over table towards me, but is firstly resisted by "London Lite" a freebie newspaper made of poor qaulity but highly absorbant paper - dam the editorial quality, it saved my shirt/tie! Two London Lite's later and a quick wipe with a wet-wipe from an adjacent table, and all I have now is a warm/damp left leg and a coffee soaked mobile and PDA which both still worked.

The mobile lost its speaker capability, but after a night on top of my boiler on a spare ceramic tile is now functioning perfectly. The PDA worked until I turned it off for the Vespa journey home, after which it gave up. I got home, opened the back (it was damp towards the top with coffee) and placed it on the same ceramic tile - it now also works.

Lesson1 - always travel with a freebie newspaper. At worst its great protection against fool's who try to eat on packed commuter trains, at best its highly absorbant. The fact it also claims to be a newspaper is a useful side benefit

Lesson2 - sugar conducts electricity, while water and most liquids once dry are pretty poor at it. Not only is sugar bad for you, its leathal to any piece of electronics. If you must dump your coffee over someone, make it a sugarless one - the compensation payment will be lower

NB: in the end I couldn't decide if this chaps greatest sin on that train was dumping the best part of a cup of coffee over me, or subjecting the rest of the train to his open-mouth eatting habits, or leaving his rubbish on the table when he departed at Swindon - perhaps the subject of a later pole!