What's your story?

What’s the story? I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. He was lambasting me for my terrible blogging rate again. I try, I really do. But sometimes the blog just doesn’t flow. Anyway, we were talking about people, and how we never really now the people that touch our lives. And what is the story of some of the people that we pass in the street. This came about after a story in the papers about an old woman who turned out to have been a spy during the war.

So when you are sitting in some café having a cup of latte and just watching the Saturday morning shopping crowds wander past do you ever wonder what people do, or have done. Do you make up stories about them? If you read my blogs you will have read about the courier van stopping by a man stood at the side of the road, that sort of thing. Mrs Giant68 and I quite often people watch. It can be quite entertaining. We have awards for the weirdest person of the day, largest boobs (yeah, I know, kinda strange) Tallest, shortest, fattest etc. But sometimes I look at people and wonder what they have experienced.

Older people will have lived through such different times than we ever will. I used to have a friend who was a gunnery officer in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He used to tell me all sorts of stories over a few pints down the pub. He talked of sippers and gulpers and cockers p’s. There were other old boys I drank with who were serving in the navy escorting Baltic convoys. These people have been through things that anyone of my generation and younger cannot imagine. Their experiences have shaped their lives in directions that ours will never go. The way the world is going, the younger generation will have their lives shaped by which computer games they play, what films they watch and which lager they drink. What sort of stories will they be able to tell people in the future over a pint in the local? Of how they set their trophy dog on some other chav after he spilled their Stella?

So when you are people watching bear in mind that the old guy shambling down the street could have a story that is far more interesting that the one you have just made up about him. When I think of all the people I know, and what I know about them, there must be some really good stories to hear. My great uncle Norman, ex RAF warrant officer who has served all over the world and tells the most amazing stories, Oggy the ex-gunnery officer, Jumbo from the Baltic convoys. Listen to the stories before they are gone, because the story of Norman getting a tank transporter stuck in Woolworths In Salisbury will be lost forever. Laugh, I very nearly p*$$ed myself over that one!