I had so much fun with the 'overheard on public transport' prompt last week, and trepkos's answer got me thinking of a follow-up question, which I hope people will enjoy just as much. This week's question is not about things you've heard, but rather about things you've seen:

What is the strangest thing you've seen someone wearing and/or carrying on public transport?

I don't actually have a particularly good response here. The most memorable thing I can think of is one of the times Matthias and I went down to visit our friends L and C in Devon during a public holiday weekend, and the return train journey was incredibly crowded, including, in our carriage, with an older couple who were carrying two newly-purchased antique chairs, and were accompanied by a giant dog, which lay down in the aisle. Between the dog and the chairs, the carriage became impassable. On another trip to that part of the world (with my mum, in order to spend a week hiking along the Southwest Coastal Pathway), we got off at the end of the train line and had to catch a bus to Tintagel — the last bus of the day — which left very late due to a guy with a massive surfboard begging and pleading with the driver to be allowed onto the bus with the surfboard, which was inevitably forbidden. But I don't think either of these things (the chairs+dog, or the surfboard) were particularly weird in the scheme of things — no doubt some of you will have witnessed much more bizarre stuff on journeys of your own.

I've got a cup of smokey black tea, I've got macarons, and I'm having a restful afternoon as the weekend wraps up. Other than my two daily trips out to the gym and pool, and a market wander during lunch today, I haven't been further than the bakery — where Matthias and spent an enjoyable time last night, drinking wine and eating a cheese platter with fresh slices of baguette for dinner. The bakery has been doing those wine nights for a couple of years now, but other than a flurry of visits when this was first starting out, I haven't really attended many. I should do it more — wine and cheese by candlelight: what's not to love?

My reading this week has consisted solely of a reread of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology. This was prompted in part by my knowledge that she has gone back in and re-edited the books for new editions, 'correcting' authorial choices that she had felt were flaws or weaknesses of the books. I'm of two minds about this sort of thing — Samantha Shannon did it with the first three books in her dystopian Bone Season series — I understand why authors are itching to get out the red pen and fix weaker writing from earlier in their careers, but I personally wish they would leave things be and have the courage to just view problems in their earlier books as signs of how far they've developed as writers.

One of the things I know Bardugo was planning to 'correct' was to age up her gang of criminal underworld crooks so that the underlying premise (gangleading criminal mastermind aged 17, with his crew of similarly aged misfits, each of whom have equally improbable achievements for characters of their youth) was less ridiculous. I know she received a lot of criticism for this, most of which I felt was misplaced: it's a fantasy YA adventure series, and teenagers in improbable and unlikely positions of leadership and achievement are kind of to be expected in that genre. The absolutely absurd situations in which Kaz Brekker and his gang of unlikely allies find themselves is part of the ridiculous charm of the duology for me, and I have no interest in reading a 'corrected' version with older characters (especially since I imagine all their interpersonal relationships will remain very adolescent in character). For all past rereads of the series, I've relied on library copies, but this was enough to make me bite the bullet and buy secondhand copies of the older editions.

It's been a couple of years since I last read the duology, and I'm pleased to report it remains as enjoyable as ever. The heists and sleights of hand are spectacular and over the top, the stakes are high, the gang of mismatched misfits — all dispossessed in one way or another, almost all refugees or immigrants, all traumatised in one way or another — start out at odds, and ultimately find a sense of resolution, home and healing in each other. The other parts of Bardugo's imagined world in the Grishaverse (fake fantasy Russia, fake fantasy China, fake fantasy Scandinavia) are laughably cartoonish thin caricatures, but her Ketterdam: fake fantasy Amsterdam, a mercantile city of canals, warehouses, schemers, scammers and commerce remains a delightful creation. It's a place where everyone comes to make their fortunes, or to outrun their pasts — where at once no one is at home, and therefore it can be home for anyone. I always love coming back to spend time there. Other than my longstanding quibble with one character death that feels cynically done in order to ensure readers know the story's stakes are high (and Bardugo then having to wildly cast around for the one character she could safely kill off without risking a massive reader backlash or her planned spinoff sequel), I loved it from start to finish, and felt the reread was very worth doing. I'm glad I made the effort to get my hands on those older editions.

My tea is getting cold, so I'll leave things here. I hope everyone's been having restful weekends.

I had to catch the bus home after work on Tuesday, instead of my regular train, but this longer, more frustrating journey was made somewhat enjoyable by the conversation two teenage boys were having behind me. They began the trip updating their respective mothers over the phone that they were going to be late home (with many repeated 'love you Mum! Yeah, love you Mum!' and so on), then pivoted to the epic online sleuthing they had undertaken when one of their friends claimed to have a new girlfriend but only provided photographic evidence of this ('It was so easy! All I had to do was reverse image-search the photo and it was obvious he'd just taken photos of a random girl on Instagram and Pinterest!'), then pivoted to the sort of inane philosophising that teenagers think is deep ('Religion is obviously just a tool for social control ... all wars in history were started because of religion — apart from economic wars'), and finally, having exhausted all other lines of conversation, started talking about how much they loved cheese and just naming different types of cheese ('Halloumi!' 'Gouda!' 'Do you know you can make your own mozzarella?' and so on).

I found the whole thing kind of endearing, and it certainly provided entertainment over the course of the 50-minute bus ride.

I never use headphones in public spaces as I like to stay alert, so I have overheard the most ridiculous things over the years, including:

A woman updating one of her friends about a family member who had just been released from prison

A guy spending the entire hour-long train ride from Cambridge to London instructing his letting agent on how to make a legal case for evicting a tenant from his property

A guy spending the entire Cambridge-London train ride talking through various complex financial market trades he was making

A young guy explaining to his girlfriend (I was sitting across from them on one of those sets of four seats around a table) that his afternoon had involved a) stealing a car, b) being chased by police as he attempted to steal said car, c) crashing the car in the police car chase and getting injured, d) the police attempting to take him to the emergency department at the hospital but refusing to go ('The car owner decided not to press charges, so I said to the police that if they weren't arresting me I didn't want to go with them to hospital') — all at absolute top volume such that the entire crowded carriage could hear every single word

I have also overheard so many specialist doctors call up their colleagues and convey huge amounts of sensitive patient information over the phone, in the reception area of our library, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a person sitting at a reception desk is actually a human being with functioning ears.

I find it absolutely excruciating to talk over the phone in public — anything more than arranging meeting times/places or letting someone know I'm running late and I'll basically immediately tell the person that I'll call them back when I'm at home — so it's always mind-boggling to me the amount of highly personal stuff that some people feel comfortable discussing at top volume in crowded public transport.

So, my question for this week's open thread: what is the strangest thing you've ever overheard on public transport?