I do a lot of couple watching, particularly in the M&S café that I go and draw in after lunch. There are some rich pickings of interesting faces, bodies and habits. He calls the women 18 short, which was the size of trousers that he used to buy for his mother. I love to watch their concentration as they eat their triangle-cut sandwiches and drink their pots of tea. Most of the couples I observe cease talking when the food arrives (there is still a kind of waitress service, at least for the hot food) and tuck in. It takes them a while to chew, many with their heads down, others with their heads up like tortoises with bits of food poking out of their mouths (like the elderly lady with the other woman who may have been her daughter, who had lettuce jutting from her lips as she munched). They share a packet of crisps or two, hands digging down while their mouths are still full of bread. I try to capture the industry of it, the flurrying of hands and the crunching mouths. It’s a kind of intimacy, I suppose, perhaps all that is left to us once age takes its toll. There is little touching. Alas, I am often very tired once I get there and the drawing is sometimes lack lustre. I’m taking it in, though, I’m taking it in.
