People watching…

I haven’t left myself much time to write this, seeing as I’m on my way back to the UK and will be filling my time there by visiting Dad (a five mile walk each way), dealing with Estate Agents (Dad wants to sell the house), and drinking beer with my brother.

Therefore, I’ll write about what’s happening right now:

It’s 9:45. I’m at the airport. I have time to waste. So, what to do? What else but people watch, I suppose…

I watch a couple inspecting their duty-free purchases – mainly cigarettes, it looks like. Do people really still smoke that much? They have boxes of the things! I think about it. I don’t see too much smoking these days. Well, only a bit, in certain bars, and I don’t think it’s tobacco they’re always smoking.

I watch an elderly gent head to the food counter and I wonder what he’s going to eat:

A roll? A slice of pizza? A pastel de nata?

I wait a couple of minutes whilst he’s being served. He then turns around and walks away – with a pint of beer. Blimey, I like a beer, but at 09:45 in the morning? And before a flight? I no longer have a beer before flying whatever the time. I simply hate the feeling: a full bladder? I just can’t take it. There again, I have an aisle seat this time… Maybe? No, no, I mustn’t!

I watch a larger-than-life lady tuck into a burger. Blimey, she can chomp. I watch mesmerised as she seems to kill it with a couple of huge mouthfuls. I’m sure that there are competitions for that sort of thing.

I watch a bloke with a long, bushy beard picking bits of food out of his facial growth. I watch a bloke in his wheelchair dictating where his wife must push him. She looks exasperated. I watch a blind man navigating his way through the crowd, tapping his white stick before him as he goes. Blimey, I don’t envy him one iota. I watch a mother trying to calm her baby, whilst people around her look on disapprovingly. ‘Give her a break,’ I think to myself.

I watch bored-looking staff stacking shelves, something I used to do at Gatwick airport back in my university days. I quite enjoyed it to be honest, and certainly didn’t find it boring. It was good for celebrity-spotting. I can reveal that, back in the day, Robbie Coltrane quite liked a bottle of Glenmorangie.

I watch as some people clear their tables meticulously once they’ve finished eating. I watch as others don’t give a toss and leave everything for someone else to deal with.

I watch as people yawn, as people laugh, as people scratch, as people chat, as people stare vacantly into the distance, as people chomp, as people sip. Yes, more and more beers are being consumed – it’s now gone 10:00am after all.

I could spend hours here people-watching, which is lucky, since hours is what I now have due to me over-estimating the possible chaos at the airport today (more of that next week). Oh well, I’ll carry on then…

‘Blimey,’ I think, ‘just look at that!’