tales from an ordinary world
1999-01-17
For some reason, I was invited to five things yesterday. Being Saturday, that's kind of ok, except for the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do the previous Saturday night. I just don't get it. I managed to make it to two of them, since one was in the early evening - a sort of birthday gathering in the Botanical Gardens for two old workmates from a previous job. I hung around for a while before I had to head off to Richmond for a friend's birthday dinner at a nice Indonesian restaurant by the name of Djakarta, which I'd been to a couple of times a few years back. The food was still pretty good, much as I remembered it, but I'd forgotten how much stuff they had decorating the place - every nook and cranny had something stuck in it, there were old books all along the window sill, along with some flashing lights around the window. The Cheap Eats guide described this as "1950's retro." Maybe they were right, I wouldn't really know. My journey home is described below - I'll embellish it later on, but for now I just wanted to dump it all out of my head...
It was just past 10pm on a saturday night. I'd just finished dinner in Bridge Road for a friend's birthday, and as I walked up to Church St to get a tram, I cursed as it sped across the intersection in front of me...
Reaching the tram stop on the corner, I checked the timetable. Ten minutes until the next one. No big deal. I sat on a fire hydrant, biding my time. There was another person, a girl maybe my age(ish), white blouse and dark blue pants - probably on her way back from work somewhere ? She sat on the bench watching for the tram, and, after a while, lit up a cigarette. The smoke curled off into the night, northwards up Church St, from where our tram would be coming.
A young kid came around the corner, mobile phone to the ear. "Yeah, I'm going to Chaser's tonight. I'll see you there ? Ok, bye...". He sat down on the pavement, leaning against the wall of the hairdressers. They had lots of advertising material on their windows, proclaiming cheap haircuts, although someone had been picking letters off the ads, making it hard to work out exactly what was going to cost you $9.95 anyway. They even had a web page on citysearch (which I couldn't find today...).
Next, a runner of some sort appeared. He had the t-shirt mentioning some fun-run or other he'd been in, and a brand-new-looking pair of runners. He asked me how long I'd been waiting. "Not long, only ten minutes," I replied. "Not that it matters anyway", he sighed. "They're never on time anyway. I can see the tram sitting up there," he said, peering up towards Victoria St. "It should have left by now."
An Indian woman arrived, being seen off by another woman and her two little kids, who wandered off fairly quickly. A drunk or drugged young guy then wandered past. He seemed to be waiting for the tram, but couldn't keep still. He disappered for a minute, then came back holding a stick. "Where'd you find that ?" asked the runner. "Dunno mate, it just, like, fell out of the sky. Must be aliens or somethin'."
After another few minutes, the runner was getting restless. The tram was about ten minutes late by now. "How far are you going ?" he asked me. "Carlisle St", I said. He asked the girl, and the indian woman too. "Wanna share a taxi ? I'm sick of waiting, and it doesn't look like the tram's going to come in a hurry." I flagged down a taxi, and we hopped in - I sat in the front, the others in the back. Just as we were driving off, we heard a tapping on the window - the stoned guy was tapping on the car with his stick. Perhaps he wanted to come with us, but there was no room. We drove off. "We don't want to go down Chapel St," someone said. "It'll be way too slow." "It's not too bad this time of night," said another. "Maybe a bit later on, but not now."
Freed from the tram-stop nervousness, they all began to chat. Being in the front seat, I was a little left out of things, so I just listened. Since I'm generally better at listening than talking, I wasn't too disappointed. "I've only just been back in the country a month, so I haven't got a car yet. I can't stand public transport, it's just so unreliable." "Where've you been ?" asked the runner. "Oh, all over the place. Europe, the Middle East. I'd been working for a bit, then holidaying, then working..." "Did you go to Spain ?" "Yeah, it was wonderful." "I wanna go there one day...I just got back a few months ago from Africa...I spent time in working in hospitals for [I forgot the name of the welfare organization] and finishing my sports science degree. South Africa, Zimbabwe...I spent a year in Kenya." "I'm planning to go to South East Asia next,' said the girl. "India would be nice". "I'm from India," the woman piped up. She explained how she'd come over here as part of an arranged marriage. She had 5 kids (the eldest being 23), and had now separated from her husband. This surprised us all, as she certainly didn't look her age (I'd picked her to be in her early thirties).
While all this went on, we'd driven over the river, and come onto Chapel St. It was, unfortunately, very crowded, taking least 5 minutes to move about 150 metres. "There's a street that runs parallel to Chapel - we can turn right up here, and go to it." Off we went down the side street, until we got to Commercial Road - it had been fenced off, for some festival (the Midsumma festival, we later worked out.) Since it was going to be a hassle to get out of there and around it, we paid the taxi driver and started walking.
Conversation somehow got on to cricket. The Indian woman had been to the match the other day, when the Australian fans had gone completely beserk. "I was afraid for my life," she said. "One young man called me a 'black bitch'. I had to ask this businessman sitting next to me if I could leave with him just so I could look like I was with somebody..." "Didn't you go with anyone ?" asked the runner. "No, nobody." "What about your kids ?" "They were off with their father. They don't like the cricket," she said sadly. It was her "stop" (so to speak), so she bade us farewell.
The rest of us kept walking. The girl said "I'm meant to be going out tonight, and I have to go home and change. I have to see a friend's band tonight. She was some old schoolfriend I hadn't seen in ten years, and then, one day, I was in a bar in Israel, and I turned around to see her standing right in front of me !" "Bizarre. What's the name of the band ?" I asked, wondering if it was one I'd heard of. "I dunno, Bishop-something ? I forget. They're playing at Revolver, she plays 'alternative' sort of music." We walked past the Windsor telephone exchange, back on to Chapel St. She headed home, leaving the runner and myself at the tram stop. I could have walked to Dandenong Road and caught another tram all the way home, but I felt a bit guilty leaving the guy here by himself - after all we'd been through. Or something. Mostly, I was just curious.
Standing on the road, straining his eyes to look for a tram, the runner said "I haven't had any dinner yet. I've got a 25km run to do in the morning...Bugger it, let's just get another taxi." "Fine by me," I said. He flagged one down. By some amazing coincidence, it was the same taxi we'd had 20 minutes previously. He looked at me with my dyed-blue hair and I couldn't help but grin insanely back at him. The runner didn't notice though, and started telling the driver about the night we'd had. We went on to Carlisle St, dropping the runner off, and I ended up home at about 11:30.
