Watching you, Watching me...

Being a fairly pleasant day I decided to take a stroll into town and partake in one of the worlds favourite pastimes of people watching. Oh how we love it, you only have to see how many reality TV shows are forced into our living rooms to see how much we love to eavesdrop on the everyday acts of the stranger around us. Whether its your average Joe or so called Celebrity we love nothing more than glimpsing a snapshot of supposed reality and how the other half live, now all from within the comfort of our own lounge we can snoop into the lives of others being paraded, dirty washing and all on prime time television.
The sun was shinning and with barely a cloud in the sky walking along the prom to town seemed the perfect route. There are not many things in this world more comical than the great British public on seeing a slight glimmer of sunshine. With the smallest of rays of sun breaking free from behind a cloud you will find countless individuals stripped to a near naked presence, present themselves on the beach to try and get a head start on the famed British tan. With what can only be described as an Oscar winning performance they lay there refusing to show that they are in fact freezing, their arms adorned with countless goose bumps as they fight back shivers from the biting sea breeze, with various catalogue poses which have surely been practiced in front of bedroom mirrors making every effort to find comfort amongst the pebbled shores. I have never been one to enjoy sitting on a beach, especially ones as uncomfortable as those found along our beautiful south coast. It rates up there with walking on hot coals and sitting on one of those car abacuses made popular in the 80’s. Whomever came up with the concept that driving a car whilst sitting on a mat made of beads is good for you must certainly now be sitting in the biggest, softest armchair laughing at the poor fools who still believe that the ability to add up your tax returns with the flexing of left and right butt cheek whilst driving is doing your posture good. If anything should be banned whilst driving it’s those things. Trying to remove a bead from some deep dark crevice has got to be more distracting than ordering your pizza on the way home from work with your mobile phone.
Progressing past the frozen sun worshipers I come across a parade of yummy mummy’s out for a stroll and a gossip. Walking six deep they take up the width of the prom, each pushing the latest in Land Rover off road buggies, who’s biggest challenging obstacle is a slightly raised drain cover or a cracked paving slab. With wheels that wouldn’t seem out of place on Big Foot they approach dauntingly in a pushchair drag race knowing no obstacle is too great for the mighty off roaders. Taking drastic, evasive action so as not to end up as road kill I move out into the path of oncoming cars and practice the less challenging danger of speeding motorists who are trying to remove beads from places best left alone.
Finally I make it into town, having survived the joggers with their lycra clad legs, cyclists who don’t seem to understand what cycle paths are for and quad bike beach patrols who, from what I can tell spend their days driving up and down the beach throwing up pebbles in their wake and generally destroying the poetic sounds of waves breaking along the shoreline. I make my way to a coffee shop where upon I am forced into ordering what I am sure is just a milky coffee but given some indulgent, mysterious Italian name. When all this happened I am not quite sure, some politically correct paper pushing terrorist that has never left the safety of his own four walls has decided that somebody somewhere may just take offence should I decide to order a black coffee and deemed it necessary that from now on we must indulge our caffeine addiction in various guises, under the different Italian pseudonyms so that no one, other than maybe every Italian on hearing our poor mispronunciation of their delightful language will take offence.
I take my “Latte”, milky coffee and find my seat outside whereupon I can watch the world go by. No sooner said than done a motorized driven super gran tears along the pavement. Peering over the top of her wire rimmed spectacles with a glint in her eye, her lips pursed as if sucking on a lemon, she travels at speed on her retro fitted chair boasting more gadgets than Bond’s latest Aston Martin and not looking out of place in the Wacky Racers, she finds her target, a small group of hoodies loitering outside a shop minding their own business, she depresses the turbo boost and with a flick of a switch walking sticks protrude from the wheels she mows down the innocent youths. Scattering the group who have found themselves having to dive for cover and slipping on the oil slick of Murray mints left in her wake she steams off to find her next unknowing target.
As the lunch hour descends upon us I am soon joined by various office folk eager to escape the dreary fluorescent-lit offices and savour a few moments of freedom. Young men forced into a suit and tie, polished shoes and manicured nails, they take their seats and unwrap some factory made lunch offering. I have never really done fashion, I’ve always worn what I found comfortable and never became a slave to the latest must have designer jeans or shirts, mainly because I have a very rare talent of making the most expensive designer garment look like sack cloth. There seems to be a new trend at the moment, which I just don’t get. It appears that Big Ben has been slightly sized down and wrapped around peoples wrists. What is it with the huge watches at the moment? Is people’s eyesight so bad that they need something that big? You could have left your watch at home on your bedside table and still see what the time is. Heaven forbid that they come with night-lights and you get sat next to one at the cinema. You could send SOS messages into the eternal universe with one of them. Leaving the boys in suits alone and their enormous timepieces, I am drawn to the very comical stage show now being paraded in front of me. There is a new challenge of finding somewhere, anywhere to indulge in the near prohibited act of smoking. People emerge from various hidden doorways and endeavour to light up in a place free from accusation and disgust. Cowering in doorways, behind bushes and in small American Football huddles these poor addicted fools partake in a lungful or two of smoke hoping that the anti-fag police are not looking on ready to pounce with fire extinguishers and leaflets showing damaged lungs.
Soon after this various school children break away from the confines of the classroom and descend on the town. Consuming as much sugar, artificial colours and calories as their lunch hour enables they swarm from shop to shop. Each of them trying in some small way to personalise the uniformed appearance forced upon them by their school. Ties tied short, back to front or tucked into the shirt soon after the top button, bending the rules ever so slightly by wearing a non conforming school jumper or trousers tight enough to count the small change in your pocket they endeavour to free themselves from the restraints of rules and regulations. Unknowingly this is their time of true freedom, soon enough they will be forced into suits and polished shoes and required to order Italian coffees paying three times the amount for a cup large enough to go paddling in so that we can feel European for a brief moment and dream of sitting in the sun by a fountain watching the colourful world go by whilst devouring a Ciabatta.
What has happened to our own identity? Why do we try to be anything but British?
Give me a good old-fashioned ploughman’s lunch and the hot beverage of my choice served from a thermos flask any day. Why is it we all want to leave this fine and glorious land but everyone else wants to get in? We flock in our hundreds and thousands to distant shores and far-flung places to establish our own versions of Britain on foreign soil and for those of us unable to we are offered the briefest of glimpses of this escape during our lunch breaks in every high street of our fair towns and cities. For a country once famed for its proud traditions and way of life we have slipped onto a very steep slope and have started to slide into a mixed gene pool of fashion and forced beliefs served to us on a silver platter of promises and dreams of a better life. Historians of the future will barely be able to distinguish one country from another as we all mix and lose our own customs. Soon the rainbow of diversity in all of us will be washed down into a very dull grey, as we all slowly but surely become the same as the person next to us. Rejoice in our differences and eccentricities, cherish them, for very soon if we listen to the glossy magazines and the spotty professionals paraded in front of us who have barely started living yet and keep telling us what to wear and how to act we will soon be just another mass produced human being of no distinguishable characteristics lost in the very glamour and cultures we longed for in the first place. Be yourself and not what somebody else tells you, you should be, for I fear if we all conform the very act of people watching will cease to be and our TV screens will be inundated with home makeovers and gardening programmes once more