My day's been aura-lly challenged

The weirdest thing happened to me on the bus this morning – someone sat on my aura…

Eh?

Yes, that’s what I thought, too. But she definitely did and it was quite unpleasant.

Now, for those of you with filthy minds, let me first just clarify what an aura is. According to the dictionary, it can be, amongst other things ‘the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person’

I first came across the notions of auras at school during activities week – a shocking infliction that came about at the end of the summer term and involved the forced signing-up for daily jaunts around the Gloucestershire countryside or in my case, a massage course, which was my final activity of the week.

The other activity spanned the first three days and was called Creative Cake Baking. Now, bearing in mind I was banned from doing Home Economics GCSE for fear of bringing the league tables down, I was surprised to get a place on this. I was a panicky baker in those days and everything tended to go wrong.

I decided to make an upright piano cake, which involved lots and lots of ready rolled icing and brown food colouring – it was all going swimmingly until I dropped the keyboard.

*sniff

Anyway, by the time the massage course started I was in need of one myself and so Best-Friend-From-School and I threw ourselves into it with gusto. The woman teaching us was a bit flaky and looked like she ate compost for breakfast. The first thing she told us to do was rub our hands together and feel each other’s auras – now, in today’s climate, the Government inspectors would have been called in for that comment, the school closed and Compost Woman carted off for a long time to a camp for unsuitables before she had a chance to explain the innocence of the situation.

But do you know what, she totally convinced me that auras exist – they’re kind of like a personal space and mine gets bigger and smaller according to how comfortable I am in a situation.

This morning, I was tired and needing sleep and so my aura was quite large and possibly radiating onto the seat next to me – my bad I guess, as it meant that when this woman – clearly without any sort of aura – sat down beside me, she sat on it. And, even though there were loads of other places she could have moved to as the bus gradually emptied out, she didn’t.

It was the most claustrophobic ride of my life. I silently willed her to move but knew I couldn’t say anything to her. After all, what kind of nutter says to their neighbour on the bus, ‘Excuse me, could you move please, you’re sat on my aura.’

And, on that note, I am off to check the palms of my hands for hair…