I like watching people watching each other.  The two girls on the bus, their eyes following the roller-skating ginger-bearded man on the pavement.  The girls in front of me turning their heads at a trio of boys carrying champagne.  “He was fit,” they say, drawing out the “i” in fit. Earlier, where they are sitting, was a man with a magnificent yellow Mohawk, having ice cream with his friend.  They seemed to be having a sensitive discussion about relationships, life journeys, one of them was talking very seriously about skate parks, saying he just felt he needed to be in a city where they were prevalent.  Every so often their heads, too, would incline towards the glass, they would let slip a smile or a snigger.

People watching is almost invariably more pleasurable when the weather is good.  This is not just because there are, inevitably, more people out, and dressed a little more brightly, but also because of the way the sunlight affects them, and makes them look, and the way that a woman standing with a dog next to a spring green tree sprouting small leaves is suddenly poetic in a way she wouldn’t be if there was a drizzle over the city or a monochrome grey in the sky.  Shadows do more interesting things like this.