Sitting Down on the Job

One Street: Market Square, Shipley #68

It's been a long and very up and down day at the office. Realised in the gloom of this morning that we're now not far from the point where I'm both travelling in and going home in the dark. I delayed my lunchtime sandwich pick-up until 2pm waiting for the torrential rain to stop. There weren't many people about, making for a very slow day for the traders at the market. I doubt whether many of the stall holders were able to even cover their costs.

I got chatting to Jean the Ferret Lady. She runs her stall to raise money for rescue ferrets. She said she has 37 of them at her home, 7 living inside and 30 outside. When she got to the eighth she realised there was no more room for them inside, but she didn't have the heart to turf the first seven residents out. It's amazing the passions in life that people find. I really couldn't bring myself to buy any of her bric-a-brac so I offered a small donation instead. I wonder what her neighbours make of it all?

You've been introduced to John before, selling the Big Issue on Market Square. He's a lovely guy. He knows about my photography projects and is always keen to know how I've been getting on taking portraits and the like. He said that he'd bumped into someone else recently, taking shots for a "Faces of Yorkshire" project. This chap was apparently not having much luck getting people to pose for him and John suggested that it might help if he removed his dark sunglasses! It's astonishing to me that someone would try to engage with people with that barrier in place. No wonder he wasn't having much success. Eye contact is everything. John then said something quite profound. He said that the secret to engaging with people was being able to smile with your eyes.

That's not something that can be forced. It's spontaneous. The muscles involved aren't under voluntary control so I guess we've learned to read that kind of smile in people's faces and know that it's genuine. And we react by smiling back with our own eyes. It's a lovely feeling when that interaction occurs spontaneously. It happens a lot to me around Market Square, probably because the people are, for the most part, so genuine.