tales from an ordinary world

2002-08-24

Some days you're alway's in somebody's way, no matter how many times you step aside for them. I could sense their displeasure in the bookshop - every time I stood still to examine something, the woman with the walking stick (she'd lift it up and point it horizontally, then swing it down again) would materialize next to me, or the energetic little kid, or the kid's mother. Whoever it was, they wanted to be where I was standing, so I'd shuffle on apologetically.

Just beforehand, I'd gone into Nando's for lunch - the first time in possibly 6 months, prompted by a guy I chatted to in Singapore who said it was one of the things he missed about Melbourne (so I felt like I should go and "appreciate" it again). A gaggle of teenage girls took a table out the front, one of then complaining to the other that "somebody stole our booth."

Even now, having my coffee on the street, angry car horns indicate that somebody is in somebody else's way.

In the Army Disposals shop, a backpack with the model name "glacier bay" puts the song in my head. An employee walks around Safeway with a "miss universe"-style sash over his shoulder, that says "information".

"anyway, it's wrapped up in good wishes and feelings," she wrote. I'm beginning to wish that I'd had more of such encouragement when I was younger - perhaps it would've allowed me to feel as if I was good at something, rather than feeling like just another pretender. Still, better now than never.