Car park hunger

26 August 2014

To Do List

The rush to make drama class – shoes, teeth, notebook, brushing my daughter’s hair. Anybody would think a war had started. Still, we make it out the door, collect her friend, enter Saturday morning traffic. Hopeful day. I tick off jobs from my floating to do list. It keeps me anchored to the here and now a mental sheet designed to stop me from drifting through the day hopelessly unencumbered. At the Highton Circulator, a roundabout large as a supermarket, an L-plater nervously edges forward. He waits, falters, misses the gaps. I shake my head, pound the steering wheel. SUVs and Magnas cruise towards us before arcing away like a show ride that promises danger within safety rails. He makes a run for it and I am hot on his heels, pedal to the metal, turning to glare at drivers who have to slow for me. My daughter and her friend rehearse lines for an upcoming concert. Horses in a paddock have them squealing. We pass the tents of a Farmer’s Market. Cars drop down Shannon Avenue towards us like chicks falling into a chute. The jobs I have to do. I turn right into West Fyans Street flashing blue light, police ribbons stretched between shrubs. A policeman stands with a specimen bag another chats to a man on the footpath. The girls stare. Stalled traffic. We wait, roll forward, wait, are released to continue staring at the ribbons, a policeman guarding the concrete driveway to a block of flats that have always been there – ugly, functional as a bad decision. We make the class, just, and I am free to return to my list, the record of my days I cling to like a remora to a whale. The radio tells me of a man who took a container of petrol, poured it over himself and struck a match – a man who gave his body to flames rather than be returned to a country of torture. His death on a patch of concrete in West Fyans Street as I was taking my daughter to drama. Some days I just throw the list away. Car park hunger Tattoos and paunches school kids on skateboards 4wds and Beemers charity bins overflowing. A topless man shuffles into Coles The Big Issue seller is liked and avoided. Buskers who specialize with the night streetlights mooning the spaces that never close. Each day is a rush to pick a few things up keeping busy with baskets, not trolleys. Tension builds after school pick-ups – snarls at exits, windscreens for protection. The day-before-public-holiday-gridlock a line of drivers stare resolutely ahead refusing to make eye contact. Like shoals of fish other drivers angle in. Barometers of wealth in a trickle down economy. Each car space equals a business

Join the conversation. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter Subscribe

ARTS AND CULTURE

Car park hunger

Subscriber login