Observation observation observation

Yesterday morning when I got up I was thinking about Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell.  This is a very good read and Orwell' writing illustrates the minute observational skills of good writers.   The crumbs on the table that never got wiped away and moved their place each morning.  

When I go out I am always watching and listening.  Sometimes I write things down but this is not always necessary.  I have a good memory.  I am a good observer.  We were taught to develop skills of observation by our English teacher and we kept what was called our Observation book.  She would task us with such things as writing about the ketchup bottle on the table at home.  She was not popular with some parents for these homework assignments and I suspect I am probably the only one who remembers them.  I think she was way ahead of her time in the teaching of English and creative writing.  She was eventually removed and replaced by a more traditional English teacher when we were in our 5th year, our O level year. 

George Orwell looked and listened and had a good take on the society he lived in.  I realised yesterday morning when thinking aboutt Keep the Aspidistra Flying that all the world of everyday life is contained in the four or five blogs that I read by UK writers and is there in front of me - the modern day equivalent of Orwell's novel.   I don't need to go out everyday to a café or go on a train ride, it is all here.  Your lives are spread before me.

One of my poem's for my final collection at the university was about Mrs Herring, a woman I once came across in a place of work in London in 1970. The office was in Tavistock Square, number 12.   She came back to me, unexplained and suddenly, and I could recall everything she told me and I could see  her clothes, her build, her looks and the minutiae of her life that she told me about.  I put it in a poem.  Now at this moment I can remember more about Mrs Herring than I can about the poem that I wrote only three months ago!

Yesterday I sat in the Queen of Iceni pub for an hour and a bit.  I watched the people and I listened a bit.  I read two newspapers.  A man told me I looked like Margaret Rutherford and then proceeded to tell me a story about saying that to a woman on the Isle of Wight.  I doubt that either of us look like Margaret Rutherford and it was his stock story to start a conversation.  He was reading a library book and I gathered from some snippets of conversation between him and other men who passed his table that it was about horse racing.  I spoke to the manager and suggested he move the coffee cups so that his staff did not have to keep disappearing to the kitchen to fetch a cup when 90% of customers at that time of day were drinking coffee and requesting a cup.  It would make ergonomic sense for his staff and the efficiency of taking orders.   He said he was new and would address the subject.  I doubt he will.  It has been like that in the Queen of Iceni in all the time I have been going in there. Pubs don't run as pubs anymore.  Bar staff are absent.  Old people during the day like to see bar staff to take their orders even if night time customers are happier at the table via the App.  Study of the age demographics of customers need to be made as well and adjustments to staffing and levels adjusted accordingly.   I suspect the cost of the staff prohibits employment of numbers really needed.  I then went to see The Running Man.  The same studies need to be made by Odeon as well, old people need help with their orders and don't like non-human apparatus for ordering a coffee and popcorn so they go without.  On arrival home late afternoon I thought that's another day over and drew the curtains and put a match to the fire. 

Incidentally, The Running Man is a great Edgar Wright film.  The book was written by Stephen King many years ago and it is a dystopian tale and we are bordering on living it right now.   It is a must see for those who like dystopian action movies.  Glen Powell is the Running Man