Don't believe me? Have a look next time you eat out.The reason is quite simple. When the couple enter the restaurant and are shown to the table, the waiter will pull the table away from the wall to allow the first person to sit down. Ask a woman to describe the fellow guests in a restaurant, after a meal out, and she will go round the whole room fairly accurately Most men will not even have noticed their neighbours. One reason for this is that women are interested in people and men are interested in themselves.Another reason is that women are usually in a better position to see. But then the ticket inspector came along and said I would either have to pay more or re-schedule our conversation, so I was forced to return to the hurly-burly of standard-class accommodation and the delight of watching other people at play.Incidentally, it is my observation that women are much better at watching other people than men are. His chief inside information seemed to be that they are a bunch of incompetents Gosh, I didn't know that. There was an ex-director of the Bath Theatre Royal, an extremely reputable top civil servant, a rugby player and my accountant.

Not all together, but scattered through the crowd like distinguished plainclothes policemen.I elected on the spur of the moment to chat to the civil servant, which turned out to be slightly embarrassing when we got on the train as it turned out that he had a first-class ticket and I had a standard, middle-of-the-road, bottom-of-the-barrel, plain ordinary ticket. This meant that he would be obliged to go and sit in the front of the train in sad isolation, whereas I had the run of all the rest of the train.I took pity on him and went to sit with him for a while and keep him company in his first- class coach, where he told me some interesting things about the present Government. I even like talking to them - I have had some great conversations in trains.And not all people on trains are strangers. The other day I got a morning train from Bath to London, and realised as I looked at the faces on the platform (why wait for the train to arrive to start studying faces?) that I knew at least four of my fellow passengers.

(I saw a man the other day reading a book called A Quick Guide to Conversational Gaelic). I like getting into trains and staring covertly at my fellow passengers, listening to them, eavesdropping on them, watching their extraordinary behaviour.I like walking to the buffet and back again to look at people's faces, to study the clothing of humanity, to look over their shoulders and see what extraordinary books and papers they are reading. I actually enjoy travelling with total strangers (I told the hitch-hiker). "You can always get a seat in a taxi and never have to stand, and you never travel with anyone you haven't been introduced to." I have a lot of respect for Willie Rushton, if not for Steven Norris, but I think I must be in a minority here. I overheard him once on the radio saying that if you really had to go across London, then taxi was the only way to do it.

And in any case ( I told the hitch-hiker) what Mr Steven Norris was saying about the pleasures of going by car and avoiding all those terrible people you meet on public transport was said a long time ago and much better by Mr Willie Rushton, the artist. I picked up a hitch-hiker yesterday. He said it was very brave of me to have anyone else in the car, after what Mr Steven Norris had said about the horror of sharing your car space with total strangers. No, no, I said, it was nice to have someone to talkto on these long drives - I had been shut up with my thoughts all this time.

Disability rights was never a marginal issue, but soon it will become an unequivocally part of the political mainstream.The author, a wheelchair user, is chairman of the Rights Now consortium of disability organisations. As the over-65-year-old population increases, from 9 million to 14 million in the next 20 years, many more people will be affected. Marketing Week estimates disabled people's potential spending power in this country as £33 billion a year.Strong those these financial arguments are, the strongest of all is the moral right disabled people have to full civil rights.The Government has, to its discredit, ignored this argument in the past.It cannot afford to do so in the future. Every opinion poll has shown businesses are surprised at the cheapness of change.Disabled people are also consumers with often untapped disposable income.