Reminded of it by the encroaching festive season, I thought I might share with you a somewhat brief recollection from my youth. Whether you believe it or not is really of no importance. There are days that even I wonder!

Spur-of-the-moment sexual encounters are nothing in the way of a radical occurrence these days. What made this special was the fact that the girl was quite obviously no “horny teen” on the make, simply a fellow traveler, finding herself at the dictate of circumstances incumbent upon her at that moment in her life.

I was but nineteen myself and travelling home a week before Christmas, on the South-eastern line from Charing Cross Station which as it happened, was right across from the department store in the Strand, where I worked as a junior salesman in the electrical department.

The train – one of the old solidly-built double-deckers that populated the line in peak hours, was crammed, in the manner of a sardine can. Let’s just say that anyone with bad breath might have found themselves socially ostracized. It was an evening like any other then you might say!

Picking up even more workers at London Bridge, the train was so full, had you wished to disembark in the for-seeable future, you would have needed to prepare for it a couple of stations earlier, to allow yourself time to gain access to a door. As for myself, I was wedged mid-aisle between seating compartments and overhead luggage racks. I can still smell that wood and leather polish.

Hard to avoid the proximity of a young girl when her bottom is crushed up against your upper thighs and her mane of hair all but sealing your nasal orifices. To say we were “spooned” is no exaggerated metaphor. At one point she glanced around and looked up at me as if to apologize for her un-lady-like crowding of my person. Aside from wanting to marry her on the instant, I simply gave thanks to God for his generosity in selecting me to be her fellow standing commuter. So pretty was she and so sweet-smelling that girlish body, albeit wrapped as it was in a thick winter coat, I needed those luggage racks to support my weakened legs.

Something less than a sexual predator in those days, I’m sure I did not have an erection, despite the procreative massage her rear-end was unavoidably bequeathing me as a result of the swaying carriage. The sensation however of having her that up-close and personal was something I remember never wanting to end. I just prayed she lived at the end of the line or at the very least, way past my station.

The playing field altered dramatically when the train braked unexpectedly, coming into New Cross station. Everyone was thrown forward with the inertia and instinctively I put my arm around the girl to prevent her from falling. An older man in front of her did actually stumble I recall.

Just for a second she looked up at me and mouthed a “Thank you.” I was so wholly captivated, it was only after we started picking up speed as we left New Cross, I realized my arm was still around her.

Impulse is a wonderful thing. It lets you do things without having first to weigh up the consequences. Standing probably no more than five-two or three, the collar of her dark woollen coat presented itself fractionally below my chin, almost hidden by the proliferation of what I would think were natural auburn curls that fell a long way past her shoulders. Perhaps I was intoxicated by her subtle perfume and temporarily unhinged, but I remember gently leaning forward and nuzzling her neck through all that hair. She smelt angelic and I knew I was holding her a fraction tighter. I knew she knew it

The least perceptible of sighs handed me the keys to the city. She pushed backwards with her body, just enough to let me know that right then, on that train, that icy winter’s night, I was supposed to be with her for whatever reason and for however briefly. I doubt she was any older than me which meant neither of us had much of a clue about life or relationships. Still, there we were – players without a script – in so cramped an eco-system, fulfilling some sort of cosmically engineered one-act play that relied on no audience for its success.

The “nuzzle,” I upgraded to a soft kiss, feeling its effect on her immediately. She murmured something, still with her back to me of course, before raising her own arms which more or less clasped mine to her. I kissed her several times; monopolizing an area of some four square inches along her neck-line. I doubt anyone noticed – I wouldn’t have cared if they did in any event!

Completely without any expectation of rebuke, I slipped my right hand inside her coat, no more than two or three buttons down. The warmth on site was considerable. My hand located what felt like quite small breasts that at first I merely cupped experimentally. No one could possibly have seen anything untoward in that confined space. By now she was noticeably pushing back on to me and making the slightest, rather sweet little sounds as I recall, as I grew more adventurous, beginning to fondle both girlish mounds, wholly protected as I was – as we were - by that woolly terrain.