Voyeur Alert!

Today seems to be a James Stewart day...

This week, Madrid is hot; and I mean hot. Yesterday (tuesday 19th of May), we hit 30ºC for the first time this year, and today we went way over that record. I live on the fifth floor of my six-storey building, so you can understand why I have recently taken to engaging in nightly walks around the block, and spots of air-taking through the kitchen window.

I'm a people-watcher: I always have been. I can remember sitting in the religious meetings with my grandmother, watching the congregation, and paying more attention to what everyone else was up to rather than listening to the pearls of wisdom dropping from the "brothers'" lips. When I started secondary school (like high school, but you finish at 16), I used to scrutinise the behaviour between the teachers, and I quickly worked out the factions, deciphering the staff room politics long before any of my friends. Part of why I love being in a foreign country is the opportunity for quiet observation. I've learnt more about Spain and spanish culture from merely keeping my mouth shut and watching the specimens in their natural habitat than any reading I've (extensively) done over the past year.

So, I take frequent spots of air throughout the day; often looking out of my kitchen window, which is on the rear face of the building, facing those of the parallel road up. After about three months of this regular activity, I realised I had become James Stewart's character in Hitchcock's classic Rear Window! It happened, tonight, when I looked out, and found myself staring at one flat, down on the ground floor, opposite:

"Oh, he has a lady friend over," I told myself. "I wonder what they'll talk about before getting on with it..." After a while, I moved my eyes upward and to the right. "Why's he got his shirt off? Must be the heat. Is he working, or chatting online? Or maybe that's just me..." Then, to the left: "She's finally gotten than frame mended! About time, too; it's been cracked for ages. Must have cost a bit..."

I then returned my gaze to Ground Floor. "Oh, there are two friends? Are they in a study group? Must be, it's exam-time..."; "He looks tired, he should stop working; or chatting online, whichever it is..."; "She ought to bring in her washing..."; "They look bored, already, they've only been at it for a few minutes..."; "He can work out as much as he likes, he still has an ugly face..."; "She's mixed her fast colours with her whites..."

...And so on, and so forth...

What the hell has happened to me?!