tales from an ordinary world

2000-01-30

Sunday afternoon in Acland street :

An old man wanders the street preaching loudly, telling us we need to be born again.

As I sit outside Big Mouth with my coffee, three guys (one of whom wears a tshirt proclaiming "I am not a role model") walk past, laughing about the preacher man.

A skanky oldish guy dressed in black with mirrorshades bums a cigarette off me. I'm always happy to give smokes to people, it's no big deal...

Some passers-by make a big show of running into some friends who are sitting at a nearby table - "Oh, hi, how are you ?", etc...

Another middle-aged guy walks past with a straw hat and a NIDA tshirt - maybe he fancies himself as a talent scout or something ?

Inside, a woman leans right across the table on one shoulder and talks to her Nike cap-wearing man. They get up and go, leaving a re-folded paper napkin placed carefully in the middle of her half of the table.

I've been so caught up in my observations, my coffee's gone lukewarm...

The guy I gave a smoke to walks back again, going the other way. He smiles, gives me the thumbs-up and pats me on the shoulder, saying "good man !" as he walks by.

Blond dreadlock-boy - tall, thin, brown-chequed shirt and motorbike boots.

A young couple, who I don't actually see, but I hear the guy saying "yeah, this is the better part of Acland St" while his girlfriend adoringly says "oh, wow".

The tram goes through Balaclava again, and at the Suntan Lounge, over top of some special deal painted in garish fluoro colours on the window, someone's written "get a real tan !" in black texta.

I bought a new issue of The Wire to read on the plane on thursday. I'm desperately trying not to read it beforehand, even if it does have an interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto (whose website now seems to reproducibly crash Netscape for me. Yay).