On voyeurism

On voyeurism

Pandemian - who once went under the name Green Fairy, but by being generally excellent she can call herself anything she damn well pleases - wrote not terribly long ago on the need to peep into other people's lives when soaps and reality TV simply do not fit the bill.

And with the car crash of Big Brother polluting the airwaves once again, we, the educated few, need our dose of genuine reality.

One sits on a train, or on the top deck of a bus, peering to people's windows as you crawl past, imagining what little drama their lives hold, what they're eating for their tea, and what's on their TV screen that night, praying that it's not Big Sodding Bruv.

Or, if you're lucky, you might get to see them in the nip.

Face like a slapped arse

Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, there is nothing to see. Row upon row of closed curtains, empty rooms. And God, it's not as if I actually go out of my way to look through windows. It is a natural human curiosity.

A natural human curiosity to see naked people.

There's this woman who lives three doors down from the in-laws, and every night she's there, black lingerie, face like a shovel of something they found in the lion enclosure at Marwell Zoo. It's hypnotising. It's a bloody disgrace. She ought to wear a hat, or a bag.

Total number of wobbly parts seen in the last twenty-five years: three. And lots of bottoms, for some reason.

I digress! There is, of course, a fine line that one should be careful not to cross. It is one thing to observe people who are too lazy to pull their curtains of an evening, it is quite another to be observed yourself. Especially by the subject of the voyeurism, or worse still, somebody whose vocabulary includes the words "Ello", "Ello" and "Ello".

Virgins

Cross that line, and you're one step away from stealing underwear from clothes lines and setting up a Bill Oddie-type hide in the grounds of the local all-girl finishing school for young ladies aged 18-21 (known locally as the Virgin Megastore, I am led to believe). And that would be wrong.

Thank God, then, that Jack Pandemian confessed. I thought I was the only one in Blogland. I spent years commuting by train, and got to know those houses as we bump-bump-bumped into Poole station like they were my own friends and relatives.

Friends and relatives who didn't know you were watching as they went to the toilet as you slid past on the 2030 from Waterloo.

I now drive to work, and it's just not the same. Take your eyes off the road and you're liable to run over some damn Peeping Tom.