Nevermind the tyrannies of CCTV, I'm an inveterate People Watcher. No, I'm not nosey... I just can't help myself! I love to watch humans doing their day-to-day stuff in their natural environment. Today I was doing just that, when I saw something funny.

So a guy comes and sits down on a step next to me at the bus stop. He's laden with carrier bags and he puts them down before his feet. As we wait for our bus, in silence he gets an item out of his shopping. A cucumber portion (that's half a cucumber for the record). He screws his face up into an attitude of total concentration and starts to scrutinise the cucumber. He turns it over and over, squeezes it, reads the small print. Then he puts it back in the bag and gets out a punnet of mushrooms; does the same thing again. The look of concentration is intense.

By now I'm giggling... internally, of course. I start to think about why he's doing this and these were the possibilities I came up with:

1. He's an alien. He's never had to do this 'shopping' thing before. He was so embarrassed and confused by the contents of the supermarket that he ran round shoving things in his basket and made a dash for the checkout. Now he's got a little time to himself and he's less blinded by the snazzy marketing, he can have a closer look at these Earth Foods.

2. He genuinely has never seen a cucumber before. Or a mushroom. What the hell do you do with a cucumber portion and a mushroom anyway? He has no idea.

3. His girlfriend gave him a shopping list this morning and asked him to pick it up on his way home. He's never had to do this before. He is wetting himself that he's bought the wrong stuff. Does any of it have calories in? He knows she doesn't like calories... Oh crap! She'll kill him. Should he phone her? No, that'll just make her even more mad. Oh well, maybe this is the last time she'll ask him to do the shopping.

3 words for you: Over. Active. Imagination.