You never stop watching

When I first started Black Cat Investigations all those years ago, I had no perception of the impact that It would have on my normal ‘non working’ life. Today is a sunny Saturday afternoon and like a million other families, we decided to pop into town to grab some essentials and stop at our local Starbucks for a coffee and some doughnuts. Sitting there, bags at our feet and sugar coated snacks on the table in front of us, I watched the rest of the world go about their business. But yet, at some point over the last few years I have lost the ability to simply watch and instead, now, analyse. The couple holding hands yet pulling in what seems to be opposite directions. The man walking ten feet behind his wife and children, engrossed in a conversation that obviously doesn’t include her or them. The couple who cant seem to get enough of each other of full view of everyone else.

Lets take the last couple as a study for a moment. He wears a ring, yet she doesn’t. He seems to be considerably older than her and whilst she never wastes a second casting glances to their improvised audience, he seems to never fully take his eyes off them, as if watching for something or someone in particular to break through the anonymous crowd.

So what of it, you may ask. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind, rightly or wrongly, is that these two aren’t together. Or at least I don’t think they are together in the accepted sense of the words. He just seems to have an air of nervousness about him that one shouldn’t have if they are not committing any offences against anyone else. Or maybe, like many men out there (myself included) he feels embarrassed by public displays of affection and thus he is totally innocent of any wrongdoing. Either way, yet again I have found myself analysing, watching for a spark that might herald the start of a new case and it is only my wife standing and gathering the bags at her feet that pull me back.

As entertaining as it is, to try and spot who is doing things they shouldn’t be, part of me yearns for the days when I could just sit in a street café and watch the world go by in harmony, rather than dissecting it and trying to find the anomalies in behaviour that we watch for in our targets.

Never mind, on to Sainsburys….