Observations

Finch looked up from The Southern Echo and folded the paper with an expression I had come to recognise.

“You have that look again, Thorn.”

“What look?”

“The one that suggests you're about to explain why something I have believed all my life is quite wrong.”

I smiled into my tea.

“My dear Finch, I have no desire to prove anyone wrong. I merely enjoy discovering why they believe themselves right.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“And what profound observation occupies you this morning?”

I rested my cup upon its saucer.

“Experience, Finch, is greatly overrated.”

His eyebrows rose.

“I beg your pardon?”

“People speak of experience as though it were a teacher. It is nothing of the sort. Experience simply places events before us. It does not insist we understand them.”

He frowned thoughtfully.

“Then what is the teacher?”

“Observation.”

The room fell quiet save for the ticking of the clock upon the mantel.

“Two men may witness the same event,” I continued. “One notices only what happened. The other notices why. Years later, the first remembers a story. The second has gained wisdom.”

Finch nodded slowly before returning to his newspaper.

“I suppose that explains why you spend so much time staring out of windows.”

“It does.”

“And why your tea is forever going cold.”

I glanced at my untouched cup and sighed.

“An unfortunate consequence of paying attention.”

Mrs Kettle chose that precise moment to enter with the teapot.

“I've brought you another fresh cup, Doctor,” she said. “I had a feeling this one had gone cold again.”

Some people possess remarkable powers of observation.