Honest, mate, I never!

In this day and age, it's increasingly difficult to prove that you didn't actually do something, when it involves technology... But, when you've nothing to hide...

I was on my way home this evening, going into the Tube, and a reminder buzzed on my PDA. I carry the thing in my pocket, so it gets bashed about a bit, seen better days, sorta thing...

Whip the phone out, click the reminder away, se that it'd got the camera screen up, so I licked that away too, and get a tap on my shoulder as I'm going down the stairs...

"Excuse me, I don't think you should be filming that!", says the guy who tapped me on the shoulder.

Befuddled, I turn round to face the bloke. Sorry, what?

"I said, I don't think you should be filming that!!" he yells, and I've got no idea what he was on about, til I twigged there was a woman in front of me as I was walking down the stairs.

I admit, I'm a perv. I have a camera phone. I did have the camera function on for a second once I took the thing out me pocket. But I don't invade people's privacy in that way.

Guy was having none of it. He strongarms me down the rest of the stairs onto the platform, pushes me against the wall and screams in my face: "Gimme that camera!"

'Course, the girl's now spooked beyond all reason, cos she's heard this going on behind her. I call out to the platform staff bloke not ten yards away, thinking I'm about to get my head kicked in.

Sorry mate, this guy's harassing me. Could you help me out here, please?

Rage bloke carries on at the top of his voice, so I offer for the Tube guy to have a look through my phone to see if there's any pictures of this girl or anyone else, for that matter.

Staff bloke says: "No, sir, that's quite all right. If you've deleted it there's no harm done"

No, mate, look... I didn't delete anything, because I didn't take any pictures of this lady or anyone else. Have a look.

Staff bloke: "oh, no, sorry sir, I didn't mean to imply-"

Yeah, but you've now got it in your head that I did take a picture and delete it, haven't you? Please, stand with me and check my phone.

Now, it took him quite a while, he was uncomfortable looking through it, but he found in the end that (with my help) the only non-system picture on my phone was one of Suu-chan, the one I use as my avy on other boards

By this time, the woman's patted me on the shoulder and said how sorry she was she got the wrong idea about me, Tube bloke's ever so annoyed because this git's been wasting his time looking through someone's phone for something that wasn't there, and screamy bloke's looking very sheepish and apologetic.

"Would you like to come to the ticket office, sirs, so we can sort this out?" says Tube bloke.

No, thank you very much, I'd like for these people to get on their way and I'd like to catch my train home, if it's all the same.

"Very well then, sir, sorry to have kept you"

Chatted quite amicably with the woman on the train, the bloke who yelled his head off at me gets even more uncomfortable as the news spreads throughout the train, both of them change trains same stop as me, get on the same next train as me too... we're becoming quite the mini-stars, us three.

I got the shock of my life when this guy tapped me on the shoulder.

I felt so small and angry when I was stood on that platform. Everyone looks at you. Worse than the well-meaning, skeptical platform guard though, worse than the bloke who picked me up off my feet and held me against the wall, worse was the poor woman's face when she heard what the bloke thought had happened.