random 001

Did you just spill iced tea over you? The girl to my right laughs, a hard cackle. She’s just filmed her friend on her mobile spilling iced tea over her ripped jeans. Her pink bare knee shows through. They laugh together at the absurdity of it. To be so daft as to spill your iced tea! I shift in my seat. The man opposite me rolls his eyes. Teenagers, he’s thinking. Or I’m thinking. Next to the girl with the loud laugh, a man speaks into his phone. Ela glykia mou, he says. I know, because it’s my mother tongue, that he’s speaking Greek. Low, soothing tones. He’s calling someone sweetheart, but because it’s in Greek and my mother is Greek, it speaks to me. My soul travels a little towards him. Stratford, he’s saying. That’s where he’s headed. Two girls walk past in coats that cinch their small waists. The man opposite me looks up and at them. Then down again. Back to fingering his mobile. I tilt my phone to landscape and take a picture. Three middle aged men. Not as photogenic as the teenagers or the young women, but needs must on a train. I don’t want to draw attention to my voyeurism. It would be easy, I think, to spend time purely travelling backwards and forwards observing other people. Catching conversation, glances, glinting human fragments. It’s a bright cold day. A brilliant wintry day. I’m on the top deck of the bus now, travelling back from the Geffrye Museum. It’s a lovely morning, Sarah says. I know she’s called Sarah because she’s just reserved two tables ‘behind the DJ’ at a bar of her choice for her birthday on February 3rd. It might be spelt Sara, I think. I suspect she’s a Sara rather than a Sarah. Her companion, Stu, sitting next to her, nods in approval once the deal’s been done. Her voice on the phone sings out over the top of people’s heads. She’s undaunted, young, happy to conduct her birthday business by phone on the bus. Oblivious to me sitting behind her, lapping up her every word. A woman in a red riding hood coat runs across the road to catch the bus. She’s carrying a sapling of a dragon tree, tall and slender, and it jiggles as she runs. She takes her seat on the top deck. Her lips are the same colour as her coat. I’m headed to a flea market on Stoke Newington High Street. But I get off the bus early to avail myself of a sugary snack. People watching is hungry work.