Die-hard Romantic

Did I ever tell you about the time I fell in love with a Japanese topologist heading north on the Bakerloo Line? It was the strangest thing. I mean, you never talk to people on the tube, right? So I was sitting there on the tube reading my book and this girl was sitting next to me a few seats down and she was drawing the Circle Line on an A4 pad. And there was just something about her - she looked smart and fragile and… perfect. And before I had time to think about it I'd blurted out:

"Hot water bottle."

She looked up cautiously, and she clearly must have though I was one of those crazies you read about. So I added, quickly, "The Circle Line, right?" She nodded. "Unmistakable - it looks just like a hot water bottle."

And she replied:

Shape is meaningless,
It might be the coastine of
Yoshaku Island.

And that was it. I was sitting with a pretty, confident, pedantic geek who spoke in haikus. It was like a dream come true.

She was travelling back to her flat from a topological conference at the Barbican, where she had presented a paper on the importance of Harry Beck, the draftsman who designed the London Underground map during his lunchtimes in 1931, and in doing so introduced the British public to the elegant simplicity of topological mapping. I can't remember precisely how she said all that in haiku, but I'm telling you, it was brilliant. Fascinating too, although my mind was already on other things. She seemed so perfect, I hardly dared ask but I had to know - was she completely perfect?

"Do you happen to like the films of Sergio Leone?" I asked her.

And she replied:

Cowboys understood
That words are far too precious
To waste like bullets

I took that as a yes, but I shut up, just in case. She went back to her drawing, and I sat daydreaming about introducing her to my parents. "Mum, this is Li: she speaks in haikus. Dad, this is Li, she cares not for the shape of things, only for their vectors and intersections. The sushi's ready, come and sit down." And my parents would sit there, swept off their feet by the exoticness of it all, and trying to look as though the chopsticks were not a problem.

When I looked up, the carriage was empty. That's the problem with the tube, everything happens so fast. Easy come, easy go. The very next week I fell in love with a Swiss nanny with a alluringly enigmatic limp, but that's a whole other story.