Station Wagon Stakeout

Sitting in the the motor eating my pieces and enjoying an overpriced beverage in a big paper cup today gave me time to monitor the ebb and flow of lunchtime parolees.

Blokes on sites generally sit in the hut, or maybe in the van, or near the pavement if the company isn’t one of these modern, humourless, shiny looking, multi-signed entrance-way (No Boots, No Vest, No Job…etc) bastards who insist that they’re not builders but some other bollocks job description, with facilitate, realisation and satisfaction in the title. Gie me a break.
Here the legend of the of the brown paper bag stained with grease spots, the folded newspaper and the bottle of Irn Bru lives on. You get cliches for a reason.

Office folks are more complex. I like to see the expensively suited, long coat wearing silver haired gents, walking with a sense of undeserved self importance. They’ve forgotten that the world outside of the 4th floor (and brass plaque at the front door, don’t forget that) doesn’t know who the hell they are, and they don’t care either.
There’s the archetypal “young exec”. Walk A is the fast one, with a purpose towards important lunchtime endeavors, Walk B is the swagger, the confidence that lunchtime is as long as he wants it. And he’ll make it with flexi-time anyway so he won’t get into trouble.
The office geek has a shirt and tie but an ordinary comfy jacket, he doesn’t give a shit, it’s a job to him not a ladder.

Then there’s the girls, every one in black boot cut trousers, singly or in groups of three or four. They mostly don’t give a shit either, there’s usually humour evident here, not the cool, restrained and measured type as exhibited by the young execs, this is loud and freely given.
It’s funny, when the girls get together it looks like they relax, when the young execs converge it seems to be all posturing and looking confident.
That contrasts with the builders who are sitting with their rigger boots outside their trousers (so folk can see they’re wearing riggers, and also so shit can fall inside them, rather than tucking them in…), trousers which often have the arse hanging out of them, everyone has another scout badge to sew onto the arm of their social position.

Students I love, it’s the same anti establishment and impractical fashions and haircuts right there that I was wearing when I was 19. I love how memories are so short, it allows folk to have careers without ever having to have a new idea. Music, fashion. movies, “We all live in the same museum, we all rearrange the same old song”. Doesn’t mean it’s not good, but folk should be aware that it’s not new, or that clever either.

There’s others of course, wee wifies with half a dozen poly bags of shopping in each hand, speed-walking junkies in navy blue and white sportswear, prowling parking wardens who eye you sideways as you sit in the driving seat and faces flying past every second that you’ve never seen before and will never see again.

Where am I? Right in the middle. Magic.