Tuesday 3rd February, I decided to spend some of my day sitting in Costa. I took my laptop, notepad and pen and connected to the free Wi-Fi which was a bonus. I needed the public and workers to look at me and think of myself actually doing something, instead of people watching! I ordered myself a hot chocolate, in fact a few hot chocolates while I spent my time just listening, observing peoples story’s.
My challenge was to sit in a location such as a park, café or bar and listen to the stories spoken.
I reached Costa at 12pm, lunch time which to me seemed like the logical thing to do as there should be a respectable amount of stories to listen to. I stayed until 4pm. Surprisingly it was fairly quiet when I first got there. A few members of the public were jotted round, some on their own and some in pairs. The biggest group I seen was a four. What I noticed in a lot of cases was once people had ordered what they wanted and taken their seat, there wouldn’t be much of a conversation just the usual, how are you and how’s your day been. This was reasonably common throughout the day, which to me was strange as you go for a coffee with friends to have a catch up but really it seemed as though some people went more for the coffee and cakes.
However there were a couple of conversations which I did engage in, hopefully without being noticed. A woman and man, who would probably be in there early 20s I would say were talking about their memories that they have had with one enough. The guy was talking about his birthday a few years ago which was at his grandma’s house. Which the girl Alison, her name was interrupted laughing quite hysterically as he joined in. They were laughing because she had dropped his birthday cake. Alison said she still can’t believe she did that and she will always be clumsy. They were still laughing. This conversation was so nice to indulge in as you got the atmosphere of such a happy, loving couple. The happiness and joy spread to me. It just felt as though that niceness was passed on to me. Like when they say vitamins are good for you, which felt good for me to watch and see.
What I really noticed was that if there was a conversation/situation that wasn’t very nice, it made myself not feel very nice. For example there were two women sitting down having a coffee, and a baby in the pram. One of the woman was explaining how her little one had not been feeling very well for a few days now. So she took him to the doctors and she had just been told to keep giving him calpol. He had a temperature which had been keeping him up, this had been causing him to be quite ratty. This just made me feel great sympathy towards the lady and the baby boy as you could see the distress she was in from worry about her child and also the lack of sleep for the both of them.
My experience just listening, was actually quite fulfilling being able to hear the stories of people’s daily life’s, problems, happiness, sadness. It’s amazing how everyone has something totally different going on in there worlds but some extremely similar. I thought it was fascinating because there is a lot of time when you will just sit down and won’t really pay attention to what is going on around you. For example with myself, if I am on my own I would just usually go into my own world.
I do believe my experience could be the start of a well thought performance. A performance about the world and the different lifestyles people live. The different emotions, feelings and atmosphere we as humans can create.
Natasha Nicolaou