79 to 85 - 1 Hour of the day.

Thought to take part in Suzanne Cabrera's 1 hour exercise. Check out her blog page, an open (sketch)book.

Was the day to take my car in for it's M.O.T. so the perfect hour offered itself up. Dropped the car at the garage, then wandered off to find a good subject arena. Ah, Asda supermarket. That will do.

So spent the hour from 10.30 to 11.30 sitting in their cafe, just seeing who would sit in front of me.

First off, an old guy...

...who made a tea and a bun last the whole hour, one studied bite after another. Is this his regular morning spot ?

At the next table two store managers were discussing stuff over coffees. I knew they belonged to the store by their Asda name badges and ties.

They both kept getting called away by the tannoy, " Supervisor to customer services... Security to till number seventeen... " and oddly, " Erica to the podium please" Was there a lap dancing aisle ?

Then a Bus Driver sat and started to revise his bus routes with 1000% concentration...

... flipping backwards and forwards through a folder of photocopied A-Z pages, comparing them to a schedule, muttering the street names to himself, thoroughly engrossed in this. I guess he had a test later.

If there is any justice for effort expended, he deserved to pass.

I reckon this must be a regular stop on the bus drivers' route, as two more came and sat at another table, one of them, according to his flourescent jacket, was an emergency operative.

I would hazard, from his relaxed chatting that there wasn't an emergency that needed operating at this precise moment, or, for that matter, a bus route test in his immediate future.

Then a young guy came and sat, anxiously checking his mobile every other second. A meeting ? An assignation ?

An illicit affair ?

Who ever he was waiting for hadn't arrived when my time was up, and the car needed to be collected. So I will never know.

Other things seen, but not sketched. Trays of uncooked Cornish pasties that looked like baby albino stegosaurus, an old lady reading a copy of People's Friend all on her own, and a small child, being crowded out of a shopping trolley by the biggest bag of potato crisps in the universe.

My car passed it's test. Hope the driver did as well.