Rear Window
When you read as much crime fiction as I do, you soon start to recognise that the fact that your mobility is impaired renders you invaluable to the average detective. (See? And you thought it was all bad...)
Those of us who don't get out much are evidently unable to make our own entertainment, with the result that we are thrown back on the hardly-at-all clichéd expedient of staring out of our windows and watching the world go by.
Until very recently, I have proved to be something of a failure in this role. Living on the first floor as I do, I would actually have to stand in front of the window in order to get a good view of what is happening on the street. Given that
a) I am very bad at standing;
b) I am far from convinced that much of any real interest happens on my street; and
c) on the occasions when it actually does, the police helicopter appears to have everything pretty much covered,
my sense of civic duty doesn't compel me to spend my days with a thermos flask of weak tea in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other.
However, it is now clear to me that not all suspicious behaviour happens at ground level. Oh no.
I was sitting at my work computer the other day when my attention was distracted by movement across the street. What had caught my eye turned out to be a sash window being raised on the first floor of one of the old Victorian houses opposite. Once he had the window open far enough for his purposes, a man wearing a white vest and blue boxer shorts reached out for something small, shallow and round which was sitting on the windowsill and took it back inside with him.
Admittedly, I couldn't see what the something small was, but that's got to be suspicious behaviour, right? I mean, if you lived in a first floor flat, what would you store on your windowsill? (Other than possibly a pint of milk, and this definitely wasn't a pint of milk.)
Suggestions on a postcard, please, to the usual address, marked for the attention of: "No, I am really not turning into my mother. Honest."
Those of us who don't get out much are evidently unable to make our own entertainment, with the result that we are thrown back on the hardly-at-all clichéd expedient of staring out of our windows and watching the world go by.
Until very recently, I have proved to be something of a failure in this role. Living on the first floor as I do, I would actually have to stand in front of the window in order to get a good view of what is happening on the street. Given that
a) I am very bad at standing;
b) I am far from convinced that much of any real interest happens on my street; and
c) on the occasions when it actually does, the police helicopter appears to have everything pretty much covered,
my sense of civic duty doesn't compel me to spend my days with a thermos flask of weak tea in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other.
However, it is now clear to me that not all suspicious behaviour happens at ground level. Oh no.
I was sitting at my work computer the other day when my attention was distracted by movement across the street. What had caught my eye turned out to be a sash window being raised on the first floor of one of the old Victorian houses opposite. Once he had the window open far enough for his purposes, a man wearing a white vest and blue boxer shorts reached out for something small, shallow and round which was sitting on the windowsill and took it back inside with him.
Admittedly, I couldn't see what the something small was, but that's got to be suspicious behaviour, right? I mean, if you lived in a first floor flat, what would you store on your windowsill? (Other than possibly a pint of milk, and this definitely wasn't a pint of milk.)
Suggestions on a postcard, please, to the usual address, marked for the attention of: "No, I am really not turning into my mother. Honest."
The Editor
posted by
Lady Bracknell | Saturday, April 26, 2008
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