tales from an ordinary world
2000-09-11
"Never alive until twenty-five."
Gene
A phone conversation - just like old times with other people, but in this case, it took 9 months before we just talked on the phone. "It feels weird talking to you on the phone," she said. Plans, random holiday plans in some country town or other. One of those couples things. And then, one way or another, I end up thinking of how I seem to know (or at least, met once or twice) all these wacky Singaporeans - not Mavis , others.
Country towns. The pub on the corner. The bus crawling up a hill, the faded road lined either side with houses that had seen better days. One day, two of us went down to Apollo Bay by bus. Who uses the golf course there, anyway ? If you walk down a particular street, you might accidentally come across the shell museum, amongst some ordinary-looking holiday houses. Where did they get all these things ? We take a long time, my companion always takes a long time looking at things - bookshops, art galleries, whatever else - he's slow and methodical, whilst I flit nervously back and forth, randomly sampling this feast for the eyes. An old lady sits in the corner, occasionally throwing us a tid-bit of information about some shell or other. There's some old rocky pier/outcrop thing not too far away - we slowly walk out and sit on the rocks for a while, until the rain starts coming down and the wind forces waves into the rocks, splashing all over us. Back at the hotel, while he lies on the sun lounge and plays with the cat, I pace back and forth for a while, wondering whether to call my girlfriend - I just want to hear her voice, but I know she probably couldn't care less. I toss a coin, and go call her anyway.
Another day, we walk out the end of town and onto the beach. A dead blowfish (or some kind of spiky fish, anyway) on the sand amongst the seaweed, marine birds (definitely spoolbills, and maybe an oyster-catcher if I'd been paying more attention). Horses, back over the other side of the main road. There's nobody here, it's not the weekend. All of this sand, all to ourselves. We have dinner in some fancy café thing - country towns never had shops like this when I was a kid. I always feel bad just swanning around for a few days and pissing off again, just another rich city guy with nothing better to do but come and annoy some decent country folk for a while.
While we wait for the bus, we sit around the grass in the middle of town. Someone excitedly notices a blue-tongued lizard wandering around, and since I've got nothing better to do but lie in the sun reading my book, I hop up and take a look. Many years ago, up in Bacchus Marsh, we found one near our friends' house - after carrying it home we built a little brick home for it before heading off to the airfield to watch our fathers having their fun - when we came back, it was gone...
