I had forgotten the potential for people watching that travel abroad provides. How, I’m not quite sure. But there we were, abroad.
And there they were: people.
People. Just doing their thing. Families, mostly, that I watched. Pushchairs and backpacks, carrier bags of increasing sizes advertising the park we were visiting that day.
And yet. Options for people watching that I didn’t expect. Observing the conversations going on between other groups. A Dutch family asking about a Kuwaiti lady’s collection of commemorative badges.
A granny in a wheelchair, parked for what seemed like ages, while the rest of the family swooped and tumbled inside an indoor roller coaster. When the kids reemerged, they ran past granny. Dad appeared, walked on. Mum took granny’s chair and set off, but didn’t really speak to her.
All the ways to wear a headscarf, to observe appropriate long sleeved tops and trousers.
And yet. The Minnie Mouse headband, the big red shoes. The sense of a little girl being let out for the day – just one who was old enough to have a little girl of her own at her side.
The figures on the fast train home, asleep, or reading to pass another commuter journey. The jumble of languages inside the carriage. It was all there, little shards of lives, though in my own tiredness I found it hard to see more than one sliver at a time.
I was out of practice. I needed another go. I got it, with two days in town, ambling by the river one day, travelling along it the next.
The little girl on the boat-bus, bored with the journey, twirling and twirling between brother and granny and grandpa. When she leans in to kiss them, to demand hugs and attention, her brown summer back appears. Even in October, she retains that reminder of warmer months.
The flocks of girls with placename bags. One spells out Paris on each stripe. Another has Montenegro on hers. I am sure there are more now, I cannot remember.
The two boys with their peanut-shaped skateboards, bottoms wiggling furiously to propel themselves along. Keeping to their own territory, by a pool with a fountain, while older ones on more conventional skateboards racked up the miles at a higher level, beside a terrace cafe outside a gallery.
The succession of expensively uniformed staff from an exclusive hotel, all lined up at the back entrance, having a communal fag break.
The street is quiet as we pass, and I try not to stare too intently at the gold and the liveried jackets. I try to imagine the conversations indoors, the pleasantries that are expected in their work.
Observation is a found item in its own right. Done well, it can be a window into someone else’s life and circumstances. But what happens when we know little about the people we see?
Do we expand from what is before us to say: this is what this city, this country is about?
Do we wonder about the stories behind the faces, the reasons that brought them to this place at that time? Do they even wonder about our stories as we pass by? Do they observe us, in turn?
Observation offers lives that are separate from ours, yet ones where we glimpse the same humanity. The moments of grace, of humour. The point of unexpected difference – or similarity.
I am reminding myself that observation is something I can choose to find – as well as something that, in off-duty moments, may sometimes choose to find me.