Evening readers. How was your weekend? Enjoyable I hope. As the ol’ grindstone is turning into another week and free time is confiscated for another four days; has anyone else noticed that there are less people ‘out and about’ at the weekend? I’m not sure whether it’s January blues, better central heating or larger petrol receipts which are causing this trend, but I don’t like it.
Walking through town amid the hustle and bustle of weekend revellers and tweenage shoppers is something I hate to love. The manly man in me hates shopping and queueing and going to shops I’ve already visited...that hour, but the inner European in me loves people watching.
Seeing how couples, teenage cliques, retirees and under-the-thumb dads behave in public is the only theatre I adore and it’s Wicked viewing. See what I did there?...Anyway, January used to be filled with miscellaneous bargain-hunting vagrants and people using shopping as an excuse for taking the kids out for some exercise (before an evening take-out pizza and sitting in front of X-factor for three hours...Score!) But now, I feel a melancholy interwoven with the glistening frost of a new and potentially tempestuous year. This is not the ‘winter of our discontent’ our elders have clichéd and forewarned us about, but the signs of things to come.
The best thing about my bedroom (besides my ever-growing collection of Swedish low-cost furniture) is the south-facing window. Seeing the flicking of aeroplane lights on their way to and from Bristol airport and being offended by the harsh low winter sun are definitely worth the price of seeing the orange sky; a suburban phenomenon caused by street light ambience reflecting off the snow covered skyline.
The reason I mention all of this is because the thing I love most about having a south-facing window is the stars. The stars aren’t soppy or celestial, they’re real and charming...you feel close to them, they make you smile, annoy you, change your perspective - the same way as the cute girl in town, the annoying sales person in the Orange Shop or the over-gentlemanly veteran in Debenhams. These are the people I miss seeing out and about on the weekend: The members of the public who make you wince, smile, cry and blush.
So if you wish to contribute to the so-called ‘big society’ which Mr. Cameron went on about, don’t feel you need to volunteer or martyr your skills - just amble about your local town for a bit on a Saturday and add some flavour to the social food-processor of life. Who knows who you might meet, or what fun might be had?
(Avid readers - please do not hold it against me that Monday’s post is technically issued on Tuesday. Kind regards, yours truly)
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