People watching

Taking the metro every day is a good opportunity to do some people watching. Someone (Claire I think) mentioned the 'french nose' the other day, so I have since been observing people' s noses (perhaps one could say I was being a bit nosey?!), and it is very true that there is a french nose and that more than half the people on the metro here have it. But there are hundreds of other things that one can observe (without the need to stare at people, obviously). Where they are goine, what mood they are in…their nationality (I'm used to observing that from touting on silver street!). Today there was a man who at a glance was not very clearly french, he could have been british, american, swiss, belgian…suprisingly, he was a businessman (there are not many around), and was dressed for the city: white shirt, smart black coat. He had a briefcase cum satchel that could easily have been german. However, he was wearing a singularly bizarre pair of rather narrow grey trousers with orange pin stripes. Definitely French.
Of course, much of this is just stereotypes. But they have to be based on some kind of evidence to start with, don't they…