How Fat Was She?

In a sold-out show, where the tickets were free, you might decide (should you only require a single seat) to ask the ushers where such a thing would be.
I'm not inexperienced. I knew they liked to pack 'em in like well drilled sardines, and despite ordering my ticket a month ago, I was on "standby", because I only turned up 20 minutes in advance of the show. This was still maybe 15 minutes more than I would choose but not the 60 minutes the BBC would demand. For those interested, what the BBC actually demand is that you miss a show in the previous hour in order to have your ticket validated. Or risk it.
I was risking it.

So, in eventually gaining access I was pointed to a seat third from the aisle. Next to the fattest woman in the room.

Now I'm sure you know where I'm going with this and I'm not going to pull any punches.

But she was with a friend, and she chose to sit on the seat second in, not the seat adjacent to the aisle, which had ample space for her to spillover.

What troubled me most during my inconvenience was her lack of humility. In accessing "my seat" she must have shifted the vast hundredweight aside a little. But the musculoskeletal pain and discomfort that I experienced over the next 90 (otherwise very amusing) minutes have made me misremember how much effort she really put into this temporal readjustment. 

Certainly, I can verify for anyone interested that her knees did not approximate at any point. I concluded after a while that it was not physically possible for her. Had she tried to approximate those knees, perhaps in the process releasing the space that I was entitled to,  then the sort of workout she would've got, well.... money cannot buy. In fact I would bet many of the shopping channels she so regularly ate cake in front of, would sell a device which would give her the opportunity to practice that task in isolation.

And yet with a little humility she could have practiced the routine manouevre for free, as an act of charity to the person whose seat she was half occupying. Me.

Second in.

Second seat in? On what planet?

Yes, I was very keen to ask her why on God's green troubled world, she hadn't chosen to switch places with the friend on the aisle. But of course I knew the answer. She had gone in bidding for two seats for herself. In a show oversold by 30%. (Ryanair has nothing on the BBC Edinburgh Festival).

And she did it for this reason.

She always does it.

So she occupied, and oozed, poured like a milkshake, and spilled into my space, reclaiming it like algae. Barely moving but always there. Creeping, never giving. No nod, no wink, no humanity. Of course I wouldn't even dare to suggest apology. After all what would that make me?

Unfortunately she also clapped like an otter. Always delivering the last clap in the room, her spongy fingers connecting so accurately every time that the whipcrack resonated through the auditorium. I named her Indy.

I couldn't clap. Because my arms were crossed at the elbow, a position worthy of an Iraqi torturer. Had I tried, I would've looked a lot like Stephen Hawkin, but lacking the same grasp on Black Holes.
Which, it turns out is Dunking Donuts latest crowdpleaser.
Not that she'd know anything about that.