Move over, ‘manspreader’

They say travel broadens the mind. Well, whoever came up with that view clearly never flew economy.

As I dropped into my seat at the back of a flight to New York, I formed an instant dislike of the man sitting next to me. For one, he was clutching a slim volume called The Little Book of Clarity. I have not read it, but it seems to be highly recommended by Paul McKenna (a British hypnotist, television broadcaster, and author of self-help books).

More importantly, he had slumped low in his centre seat and spread his legs as wide as his skinny jeans would permit. As he skimmed the pages of his self-help book, he was helping himself to every extra centimetre he could claim. I had become a victim of transatlantic manspreading.

We are all used to this well-documented phenomenon on trains, but coping with it on a long flight is surely a different matter. He accompanied his land grab with a Zen manner and somewhat self-satisfied air, which essentially implied that he was too chill to worry about such small matters. (Obviously, I inferred all this since, being British, we did not actually speak to each other.)

Not only was he encroaching into my limited space, his leg was vibrating up and down — in time to some clarifying music, no doubt — to discourage proximity. I faced seven hours of this: What was the correct approach to his economy-class imperialism?

It was perfectly calibrated, going just far enough to secure extra space, but stopping at the point where it could still be excused as thoughtlessness rather than calculated strategy.

Tactically, he played a blinder, inching into my legroom and seizing control of the strategically important armrest. To compound my irritation, he was thoughtfully making space for the attractive woman on his left, to whom he offered life wisdom and clarity throughout the flight.

And while I have no objection to a man trying to score, in this case, it was me his leg was over.

He backed it up with a vicious campaign of smiling solicitude, calibrated to make it hard for me to get snappy by subliminally suggesting that only a real jerk would make a fuss.

Now, let me be clear. I am that jerk, and can provide character witnesses to prove it. I can turn a plane’s armrest into the next battle of Monte Cassino if pushed.

However, this man was clever — he took just enough room to be annoying, but not quite enough for me to want to be the guy complaining about it.

I toyed with politely asking him to budge over, but it would have necessitated my drawing a 38th parallel along the line of the chair and I would still have to sit next to him for several hours.

I also figured that as I had the aisle seat, I could compensate a little the other way. So instead of hot words, I opted for cold war, placing a strong left leg on the line of demarcation to signify that there were limits to my tolerance.

Every now and then, he pushed further but was repelled by my intransigence. At some point, my back demanded that I twist the other way, and he seemed to sense the need for a tactical retreat.

We conducted our seven-hour war of attrition in silent civility. Americans will doubtlessly laugh at our tremulous manner. But, let me tell you, this is how we held an empire. As the flight landed, we rose and, naturally, wished each other a good trip.

I am still unsure what the correct approach is. I know how petty I must have looked, but air travel seems designed to bring out the inner, smaller you. In these circumstances, you have only two options: Be the trivial bloke who defends every millimetre of space or rise above it and let someone else’s pettiness triumph.

The Little Book of Clarity says if the pond of my mind is clouded with mud, it is impossible to make the water clear. The only problem is that my mind remains muddy as to whether I lacked the clarity to not be bothered, or the clarity to do something about it.

Sadly, however, The Little Book of Clarity does not seem to have a chapter on manspreading. Perhaps, it saved this for The Big Book of Clarity. THE FINANCIAL TIMES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Shrimsley is managing editor of FT.com. Before this, he served as The Financial Times’ chief political correspondent and news editor.