Watching
Halfway through my month without a smartphone, I’ve noticed one thing above all else: noticing itself. The small details that return to you when your gaze is no longer swallowed by that black pool of narcissism we stare into for far too many hours each day.
Most of my working week is spent at a small Ikea desk in our spare room, tapping away at websites and developing projects. To my right is a modest window overlooking the yard and back lane. Two rows of red-brick terraces face each other, divided by a strip of tarmac. Cables hang like tangled vines, rusted satellite dishes tilt dutifully toward the sky. It’s hardly bucolic, but it’s alive.
Lately, I’ve been drawn to this window more than I have in years. Instead of wasting free moments in the endless scroll, I find myself gazing at the comings and goings of my immediate community. I’m beginning to understand why it’s such an integral part of Sidney’s day. That boy can turn watching into an art form.
From here, I’ve seen a father teach his son to ride his first bike, shouting encouragement while his trousers slipped ever further south. I’ve watched a neighbour scatter chicken scraps for a band of cats who wait patiently by her back gate, punctual as clockwork. Those same cats patrol the lane like detectives, sniffing tyres, nibbling weeds, swiping at butterflies before collapsing in a patch of sun.
Every few hours a flock of starlings gathers on the rooftops, their noisy chatter carrying through the lane as they devour bread tossed onto a flat roof. Lazy seagulls balance on chimney pots, idling away their hours, watching as I do.
This week, a Goldcrest appeared, a bird I’d never seen in Dunston, darting along the narrow path while an older man swept his step with a kind of devotion I thought belonged to the Beamish.
An L-plate motorcyclist emerges daily, wheeling his bike between two parked cars before sputtering off on a reluctant 125cc. Delivery drivers thrash the tits off their vans down the back lane, desperate to hit the next drop. Parents push bairns in buggies. Dog walkers do their loops. The hours fill with these small stories.
Even the clouds have become companions, after I stumbled across a cloud-watching site that drew my gaze skyward. An endless procession, shape-shifting and drifting quietly by.
If this is boredom, the very thing we’ve tried to cure with those pay-monthly slave masters that ping, buzz, and vibrate for our attention, then I’ll take it. I’m glad to have switched.