tales from an ordinary world

2001-04-25b

"I know a girl, she walks the asphalt world"
Suede

Headlights shining down to the end of our side street, lighting up the front of a nearby house, and the near-dark sky above. We drive. There's nothing on the radio, some guy's talking about - as far as I can tell - the Reverend Horton Heat gigs that occurred recently. In contrast to their upbeat rockabilly music, he's comparing their three shows in Melbourne and Sydney in a clinical, trainspotter-like manner. While she fetches something from her flat, I sit and wait in the car for a while, in the dark, in silence, and watch cars hurrying back and forth, u-turning and stopping behind me with their lights shining full on through the car. A little later, parked elsewhere, I hop out and walk past a building site on North Road. It doesn't say what they're building, and all I can see is some T-shaped outline of a building that's been placed pretty deep into the ground. Mud tracks across the pavement. Inside the Indian restaurant they're playing The Girl from Ipanema and there's these soft lights at each table helping to set the tone. I'm leaning awkwardly over the table, trying not to knock things over, handing over the money and grabbing the bags of food. We navigate some more side-streets, where it's dark and playful, and emerge out onto the larger, sodium-yellow-bathed street to make our way home and eat.