smallhobbit | Feeding the Ducks

Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Mrs Evans (OC); John Watson
Rating: G
Word Count: 370
Notes: Written rapidly for the first day of the July Writing Prompts on

watsons_woes
Prompt: Original Character POV of Holmes and Watson, of a situation which should be mundane but, for whatever reason, isn't

Mrs Evans took a seat on the park bench and looked over to see a man feeding the ducks on the lake. She recognised him as the shorter of Mrs Hudson’s two tenants; the one she said was the more sensible of the two.

After a few minutes he looked at his watch and went to sit on a bench slightly further along the path. He took up his newspaper and began to read it.

Mrs Evans continued to watch the ducks, geese and a couple of coots as they paddled around on the lake, waiting for someone else to come and feed them. To her surprise the man got up and once more started throwing bread. Then, he looked at his watch and resumed his seat on the bench and went back to reading his paper.

Fascinated, Mrs Evans kept half an eye on him, whilst watching a young mother with a pushchair and another small child in tow slowly walking along the path. She remembered when she herself had been in that position and smiled as the trio went past.

Then sure enough the man left his seat and moved towards the edge of the lake. This time the geese didn’t wait for him to take the bag of bread crumbs out of his pocket, but began to mob him as soon as they saw him. As he returned to the bench, again having looked at his watch, he stamped at the geese to dissuade them from following him.

However, this time instead of picking up his paper he took his phone out of his pocket. Mrs Evans couldn’t hear the conversation, but she was sure from his expression that some of the words that were said were ones that a lady really shouldn’t know. Then he thrust the phone back in his pocket and set off down the path, nodding to Mrs Evans as he marched past her. She began to wonder whether, if this was the more sensible of Mrs Hudson’s tenants, what the other one was like. The answer came sooner than she expected as the second tenant hurried past her, carrying a stop watch and what looked like a large landing net.