We're in the white elephant Rococo Town Hall and people are standing to speak by the microphones but there's barely a question among them. Armfield quotes Winton, slams the state government and loses his place in the glow of applause. Linehan quotes Chekov and Winterson. He's careful not to criticise because he's not from here. Macgregor quotes her London art world friends. The domain looks like a Whitelely. The curve of the Eastern Distributor is luminous in a blue January dusk and forming the nude's languid arm.
By the time the MC is humouring the last speaker from the floor my head is resting on the back of the chair in front and I'm thinking: what if it's as simple as you get what you deserve? That's definitely a question.
The lights above are turned off alternately and near the stage. There's a yellow rhinoceros attached to a wall, walking along a wall, and I think of one of the visual artists from WA, and Ionesco.
Outside The Orient the smoker notes Noonie's red galoshes, then we're in the holding room thinking about rosso vino and wondering why they don't serve food out here. Gina's shoulder is cold and she has her jacket on only one arm.
It's a very Sydney story. Lanfranchi. Sydney Opera House. Armfield in his house with a dog called Kevin. I imagine the floorboards of the verandah.
The man at the next table says he does want children but he still has his office security pass strung around his neck. I want to tell him that it's limiting his chances of finding a mate.
She wakes feeling wrong. In the third drawer are sunglasses not worn since the 90s. They feel small, like lightness on her ears. The angles and the size are right for now.
She smells junk mail stuffed in the letterbox slot and is vaguely repulsed.
A man in a long navy coat is walking past. He's reading a book and walking at the same time, a faded old beagle on a leash in front. She knows him, she thinks, but can't remember how.
She's eating a mandarin on the way to tennis and wanting to finish it before the mulchy leaves in Northwood Street.
The sign says "push down for long straw" and I remember a pub far-away-in-time where the sign said "push down for short straw". I think about the image problem of short straws and wonder how many people choose them even for short drinks on the rocks. Just like love, Neil. Even so, it's hard to push down and pull out the straw at the same time - short or long - and it gets squashed, especially the clever ridged bit that makes it bend.
I walk past the longest line, which is for bacon and egg rolls, to the second longest line, which is for coffee. There's the Mick Molloy friend of Michael B's and Annie's boss but I don't want to talk so I make myself invisible. I'm standing behind a woman who is yelling: "Banjo, come over here for your babycino." Everyone thinking too much about things like names and what they say about us. Is it possible to avoid it all and just name your kids X (X1, X2, X3...), or the same name as the street you live on, or something that expresses that you couldn't care less, or at the very least something that expresses that you are a sensible person? Logical, I guess, except that any kids I had right now might end up being called Church Noonan, which doesn't, in fact, seem entirely sensible.
It's gusty at the market, and the cardboard boxes from which the plants have been unloaded are blowing towards the purple Tarot lady. She returns them when she asks the nursery man for change. There is a merry-go-round and she refers to it, a lot.
I'm reading about Glen Campbell interspersing conversation with song lyrics and can't really see the problem.
In The Rocks a bunch of kids are standing on the specially widened footpath describing how people dance in Melbourne. I remember their excitement and alarm, but not their words.
A man in a red shirt sits across from me and says that he gambles for a living; unlike Pickle who gambols his life away. The gambler doesn't think bloodlines are the thing. He says that now he's more of a punting consultant than a gambler. It turns out, though, that his main gripe is with Cook and Phillip Pool about which he wrote to Clover.
Quite suddenly it's Friday and time that the pink stockings met the sparkly shoes. I take them both to Campos for a coffee before work. We're on the way there when the ipod shuffles to Culture Club signaling the scene in the movie of my life when all is well with the world. Shoes and stockings are getting on famously so we go out to lunch and dinner. Lunch is spent with a road worker in a fluorescent orange vest sitting so close behind me that our bar stools are touching. I try to imagine whether anyone can see his vest and the tights in their line of vision because that would be something but I think the tights are mainly obscured by the table. Dinner is diagonally across the park. There's a girl who spends her days trying to understand people who see signs in everyday life. Not good signs. Signs that disturb and upset them, even though they are not signs at all. She goes out with a man who found a piece of Nutri-Grain shaped like ET and whipped up a minor media frenzy by posting it on ebay: http://www.ramdac.org/images/2314828_et.jpg
I remember a school holidays car trip home from a Newcastle cinema. I remember tears most of the way as our farewell to the original Extra Terrestrial.
We're sitting on a blue couch and Gina starts to talk about the dress that stayed in her handbag until she found someone it suited. This is how muses are made I say. We decide that we're probably more designer than muse.
The Dalai Lama is online, the soundrack is The Shins and Shrek is on the TV. The donkey's ears are floppy. It's the same blue couch; now the domain of presents and people who take turns to hold the baby. A green balloon is on the ceiling and then down again, ceiling and down.
There is a girl on the street outside. She is holding a yellow balloon and a kelpie by the collar.
