People Watching

Okay I'm sure you know this but people watching is the single most entertaining sport on the planet. Sitting in a cafe and watching people is the closest you're going to come to knowing 99.9% of them. You can make this even more useful and fun by taking a friend with you. Rather than just playing voyeur you can bounce off each other and come up with some ideas you'd never have come up with on your own. The fact it's become a game makes you much less self-conscious about staring in the first place. Just remember to write down what you observe.

Things we saw this weekend...

• Two people who clearly got on really well. He leaned in when asking her what kind of coffee she wanted. They shared carrying the shopping bags. They constantly made eye contact and smiled at each other.
• A family of three (mother, father and son) who went out of their way to make conversation. The woman's body language was open to her son and closed to the father who was hunched over the table desperately trying to listen in.
• A couple on the rocks. She leaned forward, he leaned back. He never smiled at her. He flirted with the waitress. They used a lot of aggressive hand gestures when talking.
• A family who have gone out of their way to dress and style their kids as "tv trendy". The children looked really uncomfortable in their get up. The wife did her best to send her husband and kids away while she had coffee with her friends.

Other people are ready made characters!