Have you ever seen someone you just can’t stop staring at? I’m a terrible starer. Wildly inappropriate. But when someone or something captures my attention – it might be the way they’re interacting with whoever they’re with or their voice or the way they look – I find it hard to rip my eyes away.
It’s a bad habit that mortifies my family and I’m not proud of it. I like to think it’s because I’m curious. Others call it nosy or just rude.
Vanessa Cranfield is one of the people who has been on the receiving end of my unflinching gaze. It was at a local park about 15 years ago and I was at a preschool picnic with my son who was about three at the time.
Vanessa was there too with her little boy who was mates with mine and though we hadn’t met at kindy, I recognised her from Preschool as the most stylish mother – actually, scrap that – the most stylish woman – I’d ever seen in real life.