In Which there are more Nice Things (but not in a Cloying sort of Way)

So, My Flatmate Georgia Who Has Cooler Musical Taste Than I Do informs me that Nick Cave keeps a weather diary. To be strictly honest, this sounds marginally less exciting than almost any other kind of diary I can think of (except maybe some kind of log of the dryness of paint, or the growth of grass or similar, perhaps) but apparently it’s great because not only can he (after checking) tell you for certain whether it rained on the 4th of May, but also because of being an exercise in interesting writing. If you describe things which boil down to “at first it was sort of cold, but later on it got warmer, and it looked like it was going to rain but then it didn’t” every day, I guess you either become more and more boring and bored with it, or you get to pay more attention, and become a more interesting writer. “This afternoon the air was like: a crisp green apple/warm soft syrup, suffocating and sweet/ harsh and brisk as an illtempered jogger/ so windy that it was like being an inch tall, standing on the lip of a hairdryer” or something. Obviously, this is not a knack I’ve got.

Nonetheless the principle of writing things out properly is surely for the best, so despite the misleading promises (well, implications) in my last post, I hereby give you the things which made the Nice Things List today. As usual, lots of other nice things happened, and no-one should feel offended if they aren’t mentioned.

Today, after the small child being a birdplane around the ocean-watching people(which I mentioned in my last post), there were police horses on my street. This is in the same category of appeals-to-my-inner-6-year-old as an icecream truck on my street: thrillingly novel even if irrelevant to me. Also, I suppose you’re probably supposed to talk about Mounted Police (or is that only what you call them in Canada?) or something, but the actual horses are the cool bit. Those are horses with more authority and gravitas than me, and I’m a bona fide biped. Also, at this point, they have more of a career than I do, technically, by a long shot. They actually have jobs. Since I’m a student on Centrelink, if they earned wages (which I’m going to have to go ahead and doubt) and payed taxes on those wages (do employees of the state pay taxes? Surely they must, but it seems strangely circular. I guess they’d have to do so in order to get tax deductions) anyway if all those things, then those horses would be able to say to me “my taxes pay your wages” or whatever it is that good honest annoyed taxpayers say to dole-bludgers (except that now I come to think of it, we’ll have to add “also if they could talk” to the list of “if”s there).

Fortunately this is all by-the-by. The point is; they were on my street and that was awesome. Also, it was clear that everyone in the street was secretly a bit excited. On a nice Saturday afternoon, there are a lot of people hanging around and going to the cafe and going for jogs and mooching in the carpark and generally cruising like life is a movie about youths in the 1950s on my street. Apparently it’s just the Place to Be. So there were all these people about, trying to be all cool and not act like police horses were at all worthy of their interest, but visibly, from my balcony, unable to resist surreptitiously watching the horses. Joggers would jog coolly past, not looking, and then once they had gotten past where it would be clear, just ever-so-casually happen to look to their left and check them out.

There is, it’s true, something strangely incongruous about horses on asphalt. Back in the day, when horses were all the crack (um, so it occurs to me that to be “all the crack” is slang from maybe the 17th Century, and thus not part of common parlance any more. It does not mean that people went about jazzed up on having smoked horses, it means more like “all the rage”. I should change it, maybe, and take out this whole bracketed bit, but I like the idea of using the slang of the time in question when discussing it. It seems neat somehow. Also, maybe a little tragic that this was just the expression that came to me, and that “all the rage” was much harder to think of. I wasn’t even alive when that was a thing people said) back then, as I said, people wouldn’t look twice at horses just moseying about like that, but I suppose with time comes novelty and all that.

Also, how amusing that the thing I was trying to say in the main part of that sentence was so much less than the parenthetical remark that nested in it. Sort of like those people who get tumours bigger than they are. There was one on the news the other day, I think? This chick had presumably just thought that she was pregnant or something, but the thing in her abdomen ended up being 90 kg or something. She was just a tiny woman (after the removal, obviously) so maybe that number is wrong. Anyway, how awful that would be! Instead of saying “oh you poor thing, are you ok, that must’ve been really traumatic for you!” people invariably say “how could you possibly let it get that big?” and judge you. This seems harsh, given how powerful a motivator denial is, not to mention if you don’t speak English well or are psychiatrically ill or something. Also, public hospital waiting lists, maybe? Surely not.

Anyway, later on, once the horses invested in the authority of the state and their rather pleased looking riders (also invested with the authority of the state, but whatever) had clopped out of our day, I caught a bus to the city, and everyone on that bus makes it onto the List. There’s something sort of great about how different everyone is on a bus to the city on a Saturday evening to a weekday morning. Instead of looking sleepy and standoffish in suits and uni clothes, people are excited and the girls are painted and dressed outlandishly and everyone gives the impression of actually wanting to be there, either on the bus or at their destination. No-one has that air of fatigued duty you get at 8am on a Thursday.

Meriting special mention on this bus are 3 sets of people. The surfy dudes up the back, to whom, in Maroubra, one always rather unfairly attributes a vague aura of menace, were sitting talking about how wonderful it was that there was a pod of dolphins in the water with them that afternoon. It was pretty adorable, you guys. Next, the bus filled with sparkly young women in cold-looking dresses and large necklaces, and with hordes of people in red and white scarves on their way to the football. All these people seemed excited too, especially the tiny little girl (maybe a 4 year old?) with her footy-fevered family who clearly didn’t quite know what was going on, but who was nonetheless just as excited as could be. (Heh, I’m noticing a theme here: as a highly excitable person myself, I get all pleased when other people, even ones I don’t know, are excited about things.) Lastly, in amongst all this hubbub, the woman sitting beside me (who was also dressed to go out, as I recall) was reading a biography of Alexander the Great. This seems like a cool thing to be doing, to be all “well, I’m going out for the evening, but I do want to learn about the history of our culture [and Alexander the Great is totally part of our modern culture, his influence was crazy-big] en route!”. I feel like we need more of this sort of thing.

Also, the rest of my evening was perfectly charming and I saw some of my dear old friends and then unexpectedly went briefly to Swing at the Roxbury. I may recount these adventures to you another day, Dear Reader, but in the meanwhile it’s almost 3 (!) so I’m definitely retiring to bed.