Category Archives: Around Marrickville

See this post for a brief description of my 500 People challenge.

1. Sunday 30 May, at a one-year-old’s birthday party, I met a number of new people, but really only had one conversation with someone who was new to me – the baby’s father’s stepmother. (We didn’t discuss what relation that makes her to the baby: I’d just go with grandmother.) She’s been travelling to Europe for work three times a year until last year, and was happy to regale me with tales of her travels, including a particularly lovely three days working at her computer on a train from Chicago to San Francisco – three very productive days with fabulous scenery rolling by outside her window. I asked the potentially annoying question: Did she know a friend of mine, from the same country of origin as her parents? After some memory trawling and adjusting of my pronunciation, she realised that she did know my friend, whom neither of us has seen or some years.
2. Tuesday afternoon, I was having a hot drink with a couple of relatives from out of town at the Art Gallery of NSW. As I carried two large slices of layered honey cake to our table, the woman at the next table looked up from her abstemious salad and said something envious. ‘They’re not for me,’ I said, sharing her envy.
3. Wednesday, in my second 20-minute session in the sauna, I somehow managed four conversations with new people. When I returned from my between-sessions cold shower, the two men I had left in sombre silence were chatting. The subject was tattoos. When one of them said, ‘I actually regret about half of mine,’ I seized the chance and asked him which ones. He backed off from his original statement ], but gave us both a tour of his calves and lower thighs, where he sported the images of a number of computer games – Pacman, Mario Bros, etc – and (the reason he’d backed off) the names of his three children. He saved the upper part of his body, he said, for more spiritual images. Something from The Everlasting Story scraped into that category.
4. Wednesday, a woman joined us, and took control of the situation, swapping names and information about how long we had all been coming. I mentioned that my partner had stopped coming because the sauna was a bit male dominated, and people didn’t observe the Covid three-person limit. As it happened she had come in and made it four, but we didn’t make an issue of it. When another man (more about him soon) poured water on the rocks, she said something like, ‘It doesn’t matter to me, but there’s a sign asking us not to do that.’ A little later when the same man took a swig of water, she said, ‘It makes no difference to me, but I’ve read that if you drink while you’re in the sauna it takes away from the health benefits.’ She didn’t seem to mind that she got grunts in return and when, after a decent pause, the man took another swig, she exchanged a rueful smile with him.
5. Wednesday, somehow the conversation turned to health and the water-swigging, stone wetting, grunting man, who had long blond hair and had a godlike surfy beauty about him – someone I was prepared to dislike on sight – volunteered that he’d recently had a brain tumour removed. While the woman, who had facilitated the conversation so elegantly, expressed sympathy, I went for vulgar curiosity: ‘Did you have a general anaesthetic, or did you have to be awake for the surgery.’ He’d had the anaesthetic, but knew it wasn’t always so. In that brief exchange my whole understanding of what was happening with the grunts etc was transformed. Later, I saw him with his clothes on, and something in his demeanour made it clear that he was dealing with the after-effects of the surgery.
6. Wednesday, then I was alone with the other man who had been part of the tattoo conversation. He said he wouldn’t be game to bring a book into the sauna. And we had an interesting chat about the problem of too-many-books. He’d recently sold some art books for about a fifth of their worth, because it was easier to just accept the first offer from a bookshop. In the earlier conversation, before we got to tattoos, we had been taking about flexibility, specifically the possibility of putting one’s palms flat on the lower bench while sitting on the upper one. He had said to tattooed man that he could help him get there. I’d chimed in – and maybe it was my entry onto the conversation: ‘You’d never get me that flexible.’ He took it as a challenge: ‘Maybe not. But I could get you closer to it.’
7. Saturday in the Inner West (Dulwich Hill, Earlwood, Marrickville, Enmore) I kept noticing other drivers being courteous and generous, often with a friendly smile, which was pretty good given how heavy the traffic was. I’m not counting them, but we had a similarly courteous encounter while walking on the Earlwood side of the Cooks River. As we approached a little sandstone-block chicane (see photo) designed to make the path unpleasant for bike-riders, a 60-something man with earbuds approached from the other direction, jogging at an impressive pace. We stopped to let him through, but he also stopped, and waited until I gave an explicit ‘After you’, then ran between the stones and past me with a friendly smile.

Running total is now 151.

See this post for a brief description of my 500 People challenge. I’m realising that the point of taking note of these mainly probably ephemeral encounters is to pay attention to moments of making connection. Since starting these weekly reports, I’ve remembered my first encounters with people who have been important in my life – which is another story, but not unrelated.

1. Sunday 23 May, we made an unplanned visit to the Corner Gallery in Stanmore, where there is an exhibition centred around beautiful photographs of Central Australian sites by Philip Bell. The artist was present, and we had an interesting chat about the work: he took the photos some time ago, and has reconsidered them in the light of Mark McKenna’s book Return to Uluru and the story of Bertha Strehlow.
2. Tuesday morning, as I was heading out to the street when a tiny white dog with a pink collar yapped a furious challenge. I bent down and offered her the back of my hand, which was enough to change her challenge to a warm, bouncy greeting. So of course I got to talk to the human who, it turned out, has just taken on looking after the puppy two days a week. She, the human, lives in a part of our complex that means she rarely has reason to come to the lovingly tended flower gardens, and she was enjoying noticing them. We chatted about dogs and working from home, and then …
3. Tuesday, immediately after that encounter, I was hailed by a recent acquaintance (Number 4 of Week 14), who introduced me to her partner, who was cleaning the brick wall outside their back door with a high-pressure hose. He apologised for the noise and, as expected, I said it was no bother. Truth be told, I’d barely noticed it.
4. Tuesday, later in the day, I was in the sauna with an old acquaintance (Number 9 of Week 13) when a third person came in and pretty much ignored my greeting. After we’d been sitting in silence for a while, my old acquaintance started doing stretch exercises, and the newcomer asked, ‘Do you have flat feet too?’ We three then had a wide-ranging conversation, starting with flat feet and achilles tendons, taking in the Indian army’s policy of rejecting applicants with flat feet or no space between their thighs, to the difficulty of making friends in a new city and the possible role that ethnicity (polite word for racism) might play in that. Both my companions were the sons of servicemen. The newcomer had to ask us to repeat some things, so I realised that his initial lack of response may have been because I had mumbled incomprehensibly to a non-native English speaker. Possibly the mumble’s friendly tone helped him to take his later initiative.
5. Thursday, as usual, was grandfathering day, and being in the company of a three-year-old person makes encounters happen. This Thursday, we had hot drinks at a cafe near the Newtown police station, a table away from a couple of men in suits who were discussing the prices of different sized USB sticks. when one of them went inside the cafe, someone at my table burped loudly. The USB man couldn’t resist. ‘Was that the young lady who did that?’ he asked. The young lady in question hung her head in pure shyness. I said, ‘No, she wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ He said, ‘Not yet.’ Given that everyone involved knew that I was the burper, this was a complex exchange, mostly benign exchange.
6. Thursday, a little later, we were on a train. A young family – man, woman, baby nearing 12 months – sat opposite us. Out of the blue, the woman produced a shiny white camera and having asked permission took a photo of us. She then handed us the undeveloped polaroid snap, and all six of us watched the image emerge. It turned out they were o their way to the airport, going home to Melbourne. The Emerging Artist and I expressed our sympathy – they were heading back to a week’s lockdown, and there we all were, chatting maskless on public transport.
7. Thursday, on the train on the way home, a woman sitting opposite us started chatting to Ruby. She responded with bowed-head shyness. The Emerging Artist asked if the woman and her companion were on their way home from work, and that led to a substantial conversation about their decades of employment for the same company, their prospects for retirement, and eventually the woman who had started it said she was sixty-five years old. The EA expressed surprise. Though I had also thought she was in her mid 40s, I thought this was a bit of an ageist gaffe, so I pointed at the EA and said, ‘She’s 35.’ (The EA is brilliant at making connections with new people – she does it by asking a lot of questions. I guess my most comfortable way is to make a joke.)
8. Saturday morning, we’re spending part of the weekend with friends at Patonga, secluded beach town north of Sydney. On an early walk, the EA and I were behind a family where each adult in turn had something to say about how the teenage girl should dress for the unexpected cold weather. One of the women noticed us drawing even with them and said, ‘Sorry,’ in that Australian way of acknowledging proximity. I said, ‘Nah,’ or something equally articulate, then pointed to the EA and said to the teenager, ‘She’s been trying to figure out what I should be wearing too.’
9. Saturday, later in the morning, we went to buy hot drinks at Cafe du Blueza – a marquee pitched in its owner’s front yard that serves snacks and drinks. I noticed some Girrakool Blues Fest merchandise and asked about his connection with it. It turns out he was the director of the Festival, but had to make a Covid pivot when it was cancelled – and is now doing quite well as a weekend front-yard barista.

Running total is now 144.

Almost all the encounters I’m recording in this series are pretty much hit-and-run. That doesn’t mean they’re insignificant, of course – some of them are the first salvoes in what might go on to become something substantial. But who can tell? See this post for a brief description of my 500 People challenge.

1. Sunday 9 May, as we came home from somewhere, a young man with a lot of tattoos and a part-shave haircut was opening the door of our small block of flats. We introduced ourselves, and he volunteered that he’s moving in with a downstairs neighbour, or perhaps just visiting.
2. Wednesday evening, we had our annual fire services inspection. This meant a man with a ladder came into our flat and set off the smoke alarms. After the minimal transactional exchanges, I said, ‘It must be hard on your ears doing that a hundred times a day.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I’m deaf.’
3. Thursday at GymKidz, in order to deal with a bit of social awkwardness among the young gymnasts, I asked a man for his daughter’s name. He wasn’t her usual escort, and she had been having a great time showing off her balancing skills to him. He had tried a couple of times to encourage her to pay attention to the instructor, but given up with cheerful resignation. We swapped the names of our young charges, but not our own names. It was his birthday, and he said that spending it at the gym was a lot better than being at work.
4. Thursday lunchtime at Sydney Park slippery-dips, a young woman in a hijab was playing on the slides with her two young children while a man I took to be her husband sat under a tree and filmed some of their activities. As we were moving away, I said to him, ‘You’ve got the easy job.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I try not to fall asleep.’ (I should say there was no hint from anyone that he wasn’t just as active as she on other occasions.)
5. Thursday a couple of minutes later, I spoke to the woman in the hijab who was then watching her daughter walk across a rickety bridge. When I admired the little girl’s fearlessness, the mother smiled broadly and amplified my comment. We chatted a little about our young people’s relative ages and sizes.
6. Thursday, still in Sydney Park, Ruby and I were riding our scooters around one of the ponds when a big dog came bounding over to us. He was friendly enough, but given that he was more than twice Ruby’s size it’s not surprising she backed off in alarm. In the nick of time, the dog turned his attention to a middle-aged man in lycra who came jogging by at a pace. The man saved himself from falling, and turned indignantly to a woman sitting on a bench nearby nursing a dog lead: ‘You have to put him on the lead, that’s the second time he’s nearly tripped me up.’ She made a compliant gesture with the lead and he jogged off. A couple of seconds later the dog, still not on the lead, got underfoot with another jogger, who went on his way discombobulated but without saying anything. At that point I said, in what I hoped was a friendly tone, ‘You really should put him on the lead.’ ‘It’s an off-leash area,’ she said. ‘That’s why we come here.’ And she and the dog, still off-leash, went off, leaving me and Ruby to our negotiations with our scooters. We passed the cranky man a little later, but by then the offending dog and its owner had left his circuit.
7. Thursday about a quarter of an hour later again, we were playing in a sandpit near a small boy and his mother. (Only the young ones were actually in the sandpit.) The mother spoke to her son in some English but mostly in another language. I broke the ice by asking what language she was speaking – Polish. Every time Ruby or our friend’s little boy went near the little Polish boy, he would clutch his big yellow tractor and say, ‘Mine!’ His mother was embarrassed, and said he had only become possessive like that since gong to childcare. We chatted about the possibility that he would keep both languages into adulthood. As we left, I refrained from saying Dasvidaniya in case a) it was Russian, and b) it meant something other than goodbye. It turns out it does mean goodbye but it is Russian. The Polish, I now know, is Do widzenia.
8. Thursday evening, when I took our recycling out, there was a new man going through the bins for cans and bottles. We chatted briefly. I rescued my single Heaps Normal can from our small bin and handed it to him.
9. Friday afternoon, I had the sauna mostly to myself. When a young man wearing a small cross on a gold chain came in I asked, conventionally, ‘How are you?’ and it turned into a conversation: he was having ‘a bit of a wild time’. We chatted for a bit about his not-very-wild dilemma (choosing between almost identical job offers) before he turned on his ear buds and I went back to my book. I couldn’t swear that this was the first conversation he and I have had. Certainly it felt as if some groundwork had been done on previous occasions. But I’m counting it as part of the challenge anyway.

Running total is now 123.