Looks Deceive

 

I was aware that I was being watched. I looked up and saw a woman leaning out of an upstairs window next door but one.

She was staring at me, and had probably been staring at me long before I looked up.

“Hello,” I said.

She didn’t reply but continued to stare, making me feel very uncomfortable in my own garden.

That particular house is occupied by students, a different cohort every year.

Last week, I saw the new intake for the first time.

The weather was warm and they were outside on the lawn. Two were sunbathing in what seemed to be outsized pyjamas into which they were squeezed. A young man was idly kicking a football as he stood chatting to them. A studious-looking bespectacled girl was sitting upright seemingly concentrating on the papers she was holding, whilst an older red-haired woman looked on.

I was impressed by the studious girl. She was obviously trying to work despite the others lazing around her. She was obviously keen to get a good degree and to get her studying off to a flying start.

As I glimpsed them a little later, I realised there was something wrong with this picture.

The studious girl was the focus of attention. Her hands seemed to be busy with the papers in front of her.

Then she lifted the paper up to her mouth and licked its edge.

All the time I thought she had been diligently studying she had in fact been rolling a joint.

The woman who had stared at me from the window a couple of days later and not responded to my, ‘Hello’ was breathing smoke out into the air.

So with this cohort, it looks as though the local university isn’t likely to climb any higher in the league tables this year.