My friends were late, and I ended up standing outside the pub. Standing outside on your own doing nothing is frankly boring and gets you looks from passersby and smokers, so to distract myself I returned to an old hobby; People watching.
It's not as freaky or as strange as it sounds, honest. It's just examining and making sense (or inventing sense) of the world around you. For example, watching a guy with a black jacket talk on the phone while walking along the smallest (and wrong) side of the path while buses race along the road close to him. This observation is a bit like play dough free for you to mould however you like. Is he unaware the fence separating most of the path and road is to help prevent pedestrians from crazy cyclists, drivers and themselves when drunk? Does he like to play with danger? Is the call stressing him out, is it urgent, what is his mood in relation to how he moves, talks - his actions? You can pick up odd conversations here and there and gather so much information. That's particularly a good way to learn about new buildings and roadworks - because people like to complain and inform others about their opinions. It's also a good way of picking up accents.
Then it became evening, and I knew it was evening, because the crowds no longer roamed in masses. Instead, there were groups of people or people walking alone that didn't have to weave so closely round other bodies. In fact, people were avoiding others and the town rangers had gone home. Across the road near the bus shelters, a girl was screaming as her boyfriend snatched her phone and threw it hard on the ground. He crushed it with his foot several times, and there was shouting, and she was distraught. She was so shocked, shaken, but so enraged. Her threats were common, "I'll tell everyone about you. I hate you." and she lingered. He snatched her phone again, and stamped on it several times. She was marching too, stomping on the ground, crying, hurt. He shouted back of course. Slowly, she began to walk away, but kept turning towards him and shouting, cursing. I think it attracted him to follow her. He had so much anger. I felt a dozen pairs of eyes from the pub watch them, entertained. A few people individual and alone stopped in their hurry to return home to watch. I didn't know what was best, but eventually she walked and he stayed where he was. For a while. And then he began to follow her again. It was easy to guess what would happen. So I followed too. Through the bus shelters, down a hill to the town centre. He went right up to her, pulled her hair, and began pulling her dress while she was screaming. Some big blokes on the other side of the road started shouting at the guy. The guy said "but I paid for that dress." but the blokes then grabbed him away, demanding he apologised to her. There are never any police when you need them, especially not in Ipswich. But I'm glad how the blokes handled it, how they were strong, how they intervened. That's something valuable that society should really trust and adopt. If we truly governed ourselves and looked after each other, we wouldn't need the police and a faulty law and justice system.
I returned to the pub, but my friends still weren't there, and I was fed up with standing still. Besides, standing still and lurking isn't the best thing to do. People notice, maybe they're people watching too - but sometimes, there are kinds of people you really don't want to notice you, who maybe will single you out, approach you. So of course the best thing to do was to go to the pub and order my first cider while waiting sitting down by the nearest window. (Oh, no glass in the windows. More like window doors. Really sets the scene for Ippy in the evenin' y'know?)
Upon sitting down, a bloke and his friend greeted me and they were friendly. I enjoyed their company and sharing my opinions on cider and Suffolk heritage such as The Vault (they used to store dose dead bodies down der!) where my boyfriend works. This is more like active or participant people watching.Will I ever see Gary and Jeff again? Most likely not. Will they remember my name? Nah. But the information I could get was still interesting. People are interesting. They have stories. And I like stories. Apparently I'm a creative writer (according to some degree I'm meant to be taking) which might have something to do with it, but I'm not sure.
Later and finally, my beautiful friends arrived. We talked and talked, drank cider, promised to meet again and departed in good spirits after many hugs.
It was getting fairly dark on the way home which my mum wasn't too pleased about. I could see her side as well as mine, so I try to adjust and be flexible whenever I can. There's a bridge near where I live which I had to walk over. It was well lit and still near traffic. A group of three large, muscular men walked along just before me. Behind me was a group of 5 or so younger men talking loudly, walking at an irregular pace. The decision to be sandwiched between them or not was fairly simple. I went further along the road so the men would get across the bridge and each group were ahead of me. Keeping reasonable distance, I returned to the bridge only for the group to stop, start laughing loudly, and shake the cables holding the bridge so the ground shook. I stopped walking only so I didn't have to go past them. They noticed me, and for a moment I wondered if they'd call out. But eventually they wondered off, leaving the cables rattling.
All pretty standard town I guess.
