Do I look like a drug dealer?
Having been done with shopping, I went on a wander around canterbury town, mostly looking for somewhere to sit. I eventually found a bench next to the enterance of a small park-like area. Inside the park was one guy with a dog, and a couple of guys with some bags. Nothing suspicious as such, but then a guy with an earpiece appeared on the other side of the enterance. People with earpieces in public tend to be either hard of hearing, or doing something interesting; and this guy didn't seem very deaf.
Thinking that something interesting might be about to happen, I hang around, and the guy with the earpiece does too, looking into the park. Then one of the guys in the park passes a package to the other one, and the guy with the earpiece says into his cuff "they're sitting and talking, a package has been passed across". I think this could get yet more interesting, and I take a closer look at the earpiece guy on the other side of the enterance. We make eye contact; he looks surprised, mumbles something into his cuff, and quickly walks away.
At this point the guys in the park are also starting to look at me, since aside from them I'm the only person there. I figure it best not to get too involved, so I walk off to continue my wandering elsewhere.
I go into the town square, and see the guy with the earpiece again; I think it weird, but I continue walking, going off into a random alley, and stumbling across our local Games Workshop store -- I pop in to see what they have, come out, and notice the earpiece guy hanging around on the other side of the street. I think this very weird, and decide maybe it's time to go home, so I head for the bus stop. Once there, I note that the guy is there too, apparenly waiting for the same bus as I am. Wondering if it's just coincidences, and I'm being paranoid, I think -- if he's queuing, then he won't be following me; so I quickly turn a 180 and leg it through some alleyways. About 300m later I come to a bench, sit down, and look over my shoulder, to see him casually leaning against the corner of a building and looking around.
At this point I see a couple of my friends walking through town with a load of shopping, so I run over to them; I would guess that walking round in a group, carrying shopping, is much less suspicious than one guy on his own, since the earpiece guy seemed to stop following me after that...
2006-10-07 04:53:28 -0500