Is this seat taken?

This may or may not become the beginning of another story. It’s based on a true event which I’ve mentioned before, when I caught a train back home from Manchester when I was a student there. My featured image is of me taken about the time when these events happened, rather a long time ago, as you can tell!

“Is this seat taken?” I asked. There was no-one sitting in it, obviously, but maybe the elderly lady sitting by the window had a companion, maybe the companion had gone in search of the buffet car, or the WC, or maybe it was nobody’s seat, and it seemed polite to enquire.
“No, it’s completely free, do sit down my dear,” she had an extremely posh accent but smiled in such a friendly fashion that I didn’t feel intimidated.
I would have taken my coat off but there was a press of people and I slid in beside her and thanked her as I tried to wedge my case between my feet.
“I can’t understand why it’s so frightfully crowded!” she said as I settled my shoulder bag on my knee and unwound my scarf from around my neck.
“Someone on the platform said the London train was delayed so people were getting on this one to change at Birmingham and make their connection,” I replied, folding my scarf.
“Excuse me,” the man sitting opposite me, apparently asleep, suddenly jerked awake and opened his eyes. “Where are we?”
“Crewe!” The lady and I chorused, which struck me as rather funny.
The man however was alarmed. “Crewe?” he almost shouted and struggled to his feet in alarm, squeezed out around the table and wrestled a bag off the luggage rack. “Excuse me!” and he pushed past the young man standing beside us and wrestled the sliding door open. I could hear the station master’s whistle blow, did he make it off the train? The lady beside me was twisting in her seat to look into the darkness, I could see nothing because of the reflections in the window.
“He made it!” she exclaimed.
“Hurrah!” I was foolishly excited by this stranger’s luck and the lady smiled at me as if amused.
“Hurrah indeed!”
I looked round and a young man was squeezing into the now vacant seat. “I’m glad he made it!” he said with a grin, “And even more glad that I now have a seat and don’t have to stand all the way to Bristol!”
The station master gave his final whistle and there was a jerk as the engine began to pull. The people still standing in the aisle steadied themselves as the train juddered and shook and I was so glad I had a seat. There’d been many times when I’d had to stand for a whole journey, and I was weary after my busy day, and had my book to read – difficult if not impossible standing up.