It's in the Detail

I'm not really interested in where people go on holiday, what car they drive, what sort of house they live in or even what their job is, though to be truthful, I'm much more interested in a person's job than in other aspects of their lives. 

What really arrests my attention is the seemingly trivial details of their lives, the minutiae, if you will. For instance, do you and your family eat breakfast together each morning, all scrubbed and ready for the day? Are the cereal bowls, plates,cups and cutlery all set out the night before? Or does each individual grab what they want, no forward planning involved, and dash out of the door, slice of toast in hand? Who clears up? Who puts the washing in the machine, who takes it out and where does it go to dry? Who irons the clothes and does anyone return them to their owners' wardrobes.Do they put their clothes out ready to slip into the following morning or do they wait until the morning? How many clothes do they own? How many pairs of shoes and handbags? Do people feel any guilt about excesses of clothes, bags or shoes?  Hard to say because  one person's excess may be another's barely adequate.

What people eat is a further source of deep interest to me. If you meet someone you know in the supermarket and they have crisps or chocolate in their trolley, you can guarantee they will, due to embarrassment at having been 'found out' make an excuse as to why the bad foods are in the trolley. So much emphasis is placed on healthy eating nowadays, and obviously the science proves the wisdom of healthy eating, that most people at least claim to eat healthily. So then, where did those sweet wrappers come from, the empty Doritos packet, the ice cream carton? And when do people eat? The women I know are on permanent diets. They skip lunch, but at 4 pm they eat a Crunchie, a Mars bar or a Twix, thereby increasing calorie intake dramatically and defeating the object entirely of the missed lunch.. Do you know anyone who is a secret night eater, that person who gets out of bed in the early hours to munch their way through the contents of the fridge? No, of course you don't because who would confess to this unseemly detail of their life?       

The minutiae of how people spend their money is, to me at least, endlessly fascinating. I have a friend who will spend literally hundreds of pounds on her hair but refuses to buy clothes from anywhere but Primark, except when the sales are in their final stages and there is  at least 70% off. Please be assured that I make no judgement here, none at all. There are some people who will kit themselves out in very expensive clothing when the paint is peeling in their living rooms, the fridge doesn't work and they are defaulting on their mortgage repayments. Again, no judgement.

Fascinating is the way in which people organise their rooms. Late October  November and December, is the best time to see, completely inconspicuously  into people's homes;  homes which you would never otherwise have access to.To pinpoint the time more precisely, it is between 5 and 6 in the afternoon which is best for spying, the reason being that people are coming home from work, school and college and the light goes on, but as yet, the curtains have not been drawn. Perfect to see inside when those inside cannot see you. Walking slowly by is the way to do it, in order to maximise viewing possibilities. Of course, having a dog helps this because in the most unlikely circumstances of anyone spotting you,or even challenging you, you can always blame the dog's need to sniff or do its business. The joy of this is that you can observe people, unobserved, and witness their unobserved behaviour. And for me that is utterly fascinating.