I like people watching. It seems the last few weeks have offered several instances where I’ve been stuck between two legs of a journey, forced to sit for an hour or so in a nearby coffee house or bar until the next train/coach comes in. I say forced, but I don’t mind that much. It’s preferable to being stuck on a cramped and sweaty bus and if I find a seat by the window in these leisurely waiting periods, so much the better.
It really is true what they tell you: No two windows are the same. By ‘they’ I mean those who sit about staring out of windows so frequently it becomes their occupation, rather than a hobby. Something that defines them. A people watcher. They’re right, of course, though not in the pedantic sense (any keen physicist will tell you that bad things happen when there’s two of anything in the same place). Some windows have character, some new viewpoints on the world we live in. Others merely afford you the crack from a brickie’s behind as they build yet another office block for people to be made redundant from.
With this in mind (though not too graphically) and aware I was in the capital, I hardly expected to find an oasis of serenity, especially at lunchtime. But right between Victoria’s rail station and her counterpart for coach travel, I found somewhere relaxing enough for me to to knock out this entire blog, and also write the majority of a new article and even pen in half a scene for the novel (more on that later) all while finding time to gaze at the travellers and city-slickers go about their business. How can I possibly have been so productive when I spent half of my time there people watching?
If I’m to be completely honest, while it can technically be classified as ’people watching’, that’s not strictly what I do. People encompasses all ages of both sexes, whereas I’m a little more select than that, certainly where gender is concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely devoted to Pip, and have no plans to stray, but I’ve always had what I call an appreciative eye (Pip calls it a wandering eye, but potato po-tah-to). If she doesn’t fully understand this characteristic in me, than she certainly accepts it.
London in particular brings out this dubious quality in me more strongly. It’s not that the women in the big smoke are prettier, just that there’s more people in general. Percentages are raised across the board, including the chance of seeing someone worth a second glance. At the risk of sounding like a small town hick, half the appeal may be the vastly varying types of lady for the visual palate to digest, and while I’m not behaving anywhere near like a dog with two happy-sticks, I am a man with two eyes.
There’s no harm in looking, after all, right? Right? That’s what Pip tells me anyway. Though she does have a curious way of making that phrase sound like a threat…
Still, a rubber neck is harder to strangle, right?
Until next time…
P.S. - ’The Novel’
Yes, you heard me right. I’ve actually bit the bullet, taken the plunge and [insert yet another motivational metaphor here] and started, all so tentatively, on my novel.
A few of you may already be aware that my book has been in the planning stages (ie. the not-started-writing-it-yet stages) for quite a while now. As usual, life gets in the way. At least that’s the excuse. It was more the fear of writing nothing but woeful bin-fodder which continued to stall my progress.
Now that pen has quite literally been put to paper,a huge part of the worry has been lifted. The nervous ‘what ifs’ have started to fade away into what I can now officially call a ‘work in progress’ and as I’ve been told something countless times, something written can become something improved. As long as I write something, anything, however bad, I’ve still written. Revisions can be made (changing it into something unrecognizably different, if it’s anything like my other writing), but nothing will always remain nothing.
Now that I’m back (and almost back to normal, for now) a new worry nags at me: I hope this new productivity doesn’t just happen in coffee houses. If so, I’ll have to claim my caffeine expenses back from Starbucks, or worse still, be forced to write the entire book in London. I’ll keep you posted.
