Watching the Detectives

Bus Detective

In Today's Issue

Bus Detective
Sherlock
That's Amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing
Word
Random Joke



Here is something new and experimental, let me know if you like it..

So, I’m sitting on a bus. The first time for many years, I marvel at its technology, from USB to WiFi. But, for all the changes, the passengers do seem to be the same.

I have often been told that my writing shows a talent for observation. I do like to watch, almost as much as I like to talk.

So I use this trip as an act of experimentation. What can I observe? What can I deduce? Sherlock on his way home(s).

In front of me sits a woman, early forties I suspect. Her coat, smart and constructed of wool, looks about five years out of date. The collar is slightly frayed. Her hair is swept back but is well conditioned, a slight smell of coconut. Her clothes, neat and tidy, appear to be quality made but again are not as fashionable as I think a woman of this age would wear. Physically, she appears to look after herself but looks tired, dark rings beneath her eyes. Her fingernails neat, but show evidence of being chewed. Her tummy shows a slight swell, the typical physicality of a woman who has gone through childbirth at least once.

Her shoes neat and simple, no great heel and show no sign of great wear. Her fingers show no rings. I look as closely as I dare and notice an indentation where a wedding ring may have been.

She occasionally checks her phone. A smart one, but not up to date. She does not check any websites just messages. This would suggest that her contract may be small or pay as you go to keep her costs down.

The coat and clothes show that no great expense has been spent, but that was perhaps two or three years ago. Shoes worn, but not so much; this suggests a person who doesn’t walk in these shoes, a car owner?

No rings. I conclude that she is divorced and has not done well from the split. A shortage of money to update her wardrobe and perhaps a recent change of circumstances concerning her car. Perhaps it is in for repair, or she has had to shelve it due to cost. She is a Mother of at least one teenager. The tiredness and anxiousness showed by her nails suggest trouble at home. An unruly teen, angry at her split with the father or financial arguments.

Opposite the bus aisle sits a young man. Blonde hair shaved at the sides and piled on top of his head, the identifying quiff of a hipster. He is, however, cleanly shaven. His left ear shows a piercing but contains no earring; it has been removed.

He is wearing a grey suit. The shoulders are slightly too big for the man; the suit also appears to be manufactured of manmade fibres, a mix of cotton and lycra. It is not wool. The fact that its slightly ill-fitting suggests it is ‘off the shelf’ rather than made to measure. The construction and fabric would seem to suggest a supermarket suit. His shirt, although clean is a tarnished white. He wears no cufflinks as there appear to be no holes for them in the cuffs, again suggesting a cheaper manufactured shirt. The cuffs show sign of wear underneath seeming to suggest that they rub against a surface regularly.

Shoe leather uppers but rubber soles. Not dirty but not polished.He carries a carrier bag with a store logo on it. The bag contains the square outline of what appears to be a lunch box. He has yet to look up from his phone, a new up to date iPhone, I see facebook and twitter pop up as well as other sites I do not recognise. I think this young man is in retail, he is certainly ‘front of house’ as the fact he is clean shaven and without an earring suggests. He carries no briefcase but rather a carrier bag this reinforces my idea that he is not an ‘office worker’. Given his age and cash he has to spend on a phone, I would assume he lives at home.

The bus trundles on, would I make a detective?

The Top 10 Portrayals Of Sherlock Holmes

10. Ellie Norwood

Norwood played Holmes in 47 silent films ! He was the first actor to bring Holmes from the page and onto film.

9. Nicholas Rowe

Nicholas Rowe was the star of the 1985 Steven Spielberg movie Young Sherlock Holmes.

8. Tom Baker

A year after leaving Doctor Who, Baker was invited to play Holmes by his former producer Barry Letts. The 1982 BBC television production of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, 

7. Arthur Wontner

Arthur Wontner won the role of Holmes having played Sexton Blake, a character seen as a flattering imitation of the Baker Street detective. Wontner earned appreciation from staunch Holmes experts, including Conan Doyle’s wife.

6. Douglas Wilmer

Douglas Wilmer became the first television Sherlock Holmes when the BBC produced The Speckled Band in 1964.

5. Robert Downey Jr

Over the course of two Guy Ritchie films, Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011), the magnetic personality of Robert Downey Jr has allowed his rather crass, cynical, yet likeable portrayal of the master detective to be enjoyed by cinema-goers across the world.

4. Peter Cushing

Although Peter Cushing first portrayed Holmes in the 1959 Hammer version of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, he is perhaps better remembered for the 16-episode, 1968 BBC series, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, when he replaced Douglas Wilmer as the Baker Street sleuth. Even as late as 1984, Cushing appeared as Holmes in the TV movie The Masks Of Death.

3. Basil Rathbone

Arguably the actor most commonly identified with Sherlock Holmes on film, Sir Basil Rathbone made 14 Sherlock Holmes movies between 1939 and 1946, creating the deerstalker and cape look in the process.

2. Benedict Cumberbatch

Star of the current BBC series Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch is Holmes for the 21st century.

1. Jeremy Brett

The sorely-missed Jeremy Brett was a genuine one-off – an actor of immense skill and intense personality. In 1984 Granada television, fresh from the success of The Jewel In The Crown, produced an equally superb television adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Supported first by David Burke and then Edward Hardwicke, both intelligent and thoughtful as Watson, Jeremy Brett made Sherlock Holmes so much his own that any fresh television adaptation would have to approach Conan Doyle’s work from a very different direction.

21% of the UK population think Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

Word of the day: CRYTOSCOPOPHILIA - The urge to look through people’s windows as you pass their houses.

You know what I hate? People who answer their own questions