Category Archives: Diary

Continuing with the challenge to talk to 500 new people this year. See this post for the brief description of the challenge.

This week:

1. Sunday 21 March in Sydney the sustained heavy rain had strangers talking to each other, especially in the crowded supermarket.
   When the Emerging Artist said to me, ‘You stand in line while I get the rest of our stuff,’ a woman with a strong southern European accent burst out laughing. We had been unwittingly blocking her path to the end of a checkout line. I let her in front of me, and a conversation followed. Was there a new Covid panic that none of us (a couple of other people joined the conversation) knew about? A young woman in a mask and a stylish tattoo on the nape of her neck searched her phone for news.
   The conversation kept up, among strangers thrown together by the weather, until my load was rung up and paid for, and I headed off to the fish shop. A quarter of an hour later at the greengrocer’s, the masked young woman and I passed by each other like total strangers.
2. Tuesday morning at the pool, as I finished my eight laps in the slow lane, one of the attendants was fiddling with the lane-dividing ropes. I said something banal like, ‘Tightening the ropes?’ She said, ‘You’re all swimming too fast.’ I laughed: ‘It’s a long time since anyone said that to me.’ She only had one line: ‘You’re all swimming too fast,’ she said again, and gestured vaguely to the adjacent gentle exercise area. [Incidentally this is an example of a tiny exchange that laid the basis for subsequent ones – on Friday morning, she initiated a brief chat.]
3. Wednesday evening, unusually, I was in Marrickville Library at 7.15. When the lights were dimmed, I was engrossed with my computer and it took a while to realise it was a signal. Without thinking, I turned to the person next to me, who was also packing up her computer: ‘I could have kept going for another hour.’ She said, ‘Yes, you get into the zone, don’t you?’
4. Wednesday, a little later, when I stopped to buy a quick meal at a Portuguese place, I decided to go for something beyond strict transactionalism. I asked the young man serving me if he was Portuguese. ‘No,’ he said, ‘are you?’ When I said I was from north Queensland, he looked as if that was surprising, and told me where he was from. I had to ask him to repeat it, but was too embarrassed to ask when I still didn’t catch it.
5. Thursday morning at GymKidz with Ruby, I was sitting on the sidelines as usual while the Emerging Artist did the hard yards of encouraging and assisting. I turned to the woman sitting –suitably distanced – in the next chair and asked, ‘Are you a grandparent too?’ She smiled and gestured to indicate that she didn’t speak english. A little later her daughter joined her, and she and I laughed together admiringly at our respective young descendants’ skills.
6. Thursday, later, a beautiful day at the zoo, the three of us were standing at a glass wall staring into a deep, empty pool whose surface was a couple of metres above eye level. A small boy, maybe four years old, approached us and said, ‘My nan told me to tell you that there aren’t any seals in there.’ We thanked him, and acknowledged his nan as we left.
7. Friday morning at the chemists while waiting for some prescriptions, a little girl was crawling on the carpet. Her mother said something like, ‘Good dog,’ and her slightly older sister just looked mortified. I said softly to the mother, ‘What a beautiful puppy you’ve got.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, isn’t it.’ We chatted, and after a while the older girl picked the younger one up in a big hug.
8. Friday evening, we checked in at a motel in Albury (this is starting to feel like a personal contact tracing exercise). The tired-looking young man at reception was wearing a colourful T-shirt featuring Kramer from Seinfeld. I said I liked it. We discussed Kramer briefly. I asked if he had a printer so we could print off our permit to enter Victoria. He said having it on the phone was fine, and anyway no one was checking now – he’d travelled to Melbourne and back a couple of days ago and forgot to get a permit: ‘I felt naughty.’
9. Friday evening, a little later, a family group was walking on the opposite footpath to us. One of the boys – probably about 8 – called out a cheerful greeting to people in a passing car. As we got closer, I saw that he called out and waved to every passing car, and that there was then a discussion with the other, older boys about whether anyone had waved back. I asked if that’s what he was doing, and expressed my approval.
10. Saturday afternoon, at our accommodation in Carlton, I asked the young man at reception if there was any parking nearby. He said the basement parking was theoretically full but he’d work something for us. Bearing in mind this challenge, I remembered to ask him his name when I thanked him.

Running total is now 58.

Continuing with the challenge to talk to 500 new people this year. See this post for the brief description of the challenge. As I think I’ve already said, this is partly making notes of the kind of casual encounters that happen almost unnoticed in the normal run of things, and partly recording moments when I step out of my habitual civic disregard (a sociological term I learned from a clever niece).

This week:

1. Saturday 13 March. In a shop in Gerrigong (a small coastal town south of Sydney), the young man behind the counter had already activated the eftpos device by the time I extracted a couple of notes from my wallet to pay in cash. I said something about being old-fashioned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Since Covid arrived people have been using cash much more. We used to get a lot of complaints that we didn’t accept cards for less than $10. Now the same people insist on paying cash no matter how big the bill.’ His hypothesis is that because Covid meant that most holiday rental properties were idle, many owners took the opportunity to have work done, which meant that tradies in the area had a lot more cash than usual.
2. Monday. My computer was showing signs of imminent explosion, so the Emerging Artist and I went shopping. Covid is still around, so I was interviewed outside the shop before I could go in and do the actual buying. My interviewer was a charming 20-year-old from Western Sydney. While we were waiting for a necessary SMS, we had a great conversation: her career ambitions (the EA gave her career advice, which was cheerfully noted and probably filed under ‘To Be Ignored’), and some highlights of belonging to an immigrant community (I particularly loved the way she gestured to her face as a way of saying she encountered racism, and could be seen mentally sifting through possible terms before lighting on ‘person of colour’). We swapped fragments of life stories. All three of us laughed a lot.
3. Wednesday morning at the pool. I’m a slow swimmer, used to being overtaken, and I often wait at the end of a lap to give way to slightly faster swimmers. This usually happens with minimal or no verbal or facial communication. Today I was faster than the only other person in my lane. He waited for me to pass him at the end of a lap. I stopped to check that that’s what he was doing, said, ‘G’day,’ and we exchanged friendly smiles as between to ageing, slow males.
4. Also Wednesday morning, on the way home from the pool I passed a woman sitting on the grass flanked by two boxer-type dogs, with four slices of bread on a cloth in front of her. She placed a slice of ham on each slice while the dogs watched patiently. I would normally have smiled quietly to myself, but I stopped and commented: ‘What well-behaved dogs!’ She gave the standard reply: ‘Sometimes.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘ they’re both being incredibly restrained.’ ‘They know their turn’s coming,’ she said. [This was a slightly scary encounter. How many tweets have I seen complaining about men feeling entitled to conversation with women just going about their lives alone in a public place? If she’d told me to f*** off, I would have understood … but there were dogs.]
5. Still Wednesday morning, at the dentist for major repairs, I introduced myself to the dental assistant, who is relatively new to the practice and completely new to me. Like her predecessor, she hardly spoke during the rest of my time there, but at least we had each acknowledged that the other had a name.
6. Friday morning, back at the dentist, there was a different dental assistant. I was a bit preoccupied with having a tooth crowned and didn’t do more than nod on arrival. But after about half an hour of unpleasantness, while we were all waiting for something to set, I seized the moment. ‘You’re W–, is that right?’ (The dentist had called her by her name once in his stream of soft-spoken requests and instructions.) ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m Jonathan.’ ‘Nice to meet you.’ Then she stuck a suction hose in my mouth and we both went back to our non-speaking roles.
7. Saturday evening, at the movies, the first time the EA and I have been in a fairly full theatre for a year (and yes, this is deemed safe in Sydney now). A couple of minutes before the lights went down the man in the seat in front of me asked if I minded if he tilted his seat back. Of course not, but I didn’t let it go quite at that. ‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ and I asked how to do it: ‘It’s like travelling first class.’ He laughed, and several people in our row tilted theirs back along with me. It was the Alliance Française French Film Festival, but the polite man had no trace of a French accent.

Running total is now 48.

See this post for the brief description of the challenge.

This week I haven’t done well at all – partly because I’ve been preoccupied with people I already know, and patly because I haven’t got out much. I realised that this project isn’t quite as trivial as I might have thought when I went for a walk by the Cooks River one afternoon and passed maybe 20 people of a range of ages, ethnicities and genders, and try as ai might I couldn’t even make eye contact with one of them … except for the one who features at point 5 here

1. Saturday evening, 7 o’clock, walking down Marion Street in Leichhardt looking for somewhere to eat, we had to make our way through a crowd of partygoers, carrying balloons and wearing funny hats. Three young women seemed the most approachable, especially as one of them was carrying a huge slice of sponge cake on a paper plate dripping with whipped cream. I said something inane to the cake-bearer. She laughed.
2. Tuesday. I went to a shop to pick up something that someone else had ordered. At my first words to the young man at the front of the shop, a voice from behind a tall display called out, and its owner emerged with the thing I was after in his hands. It turned out we had met briefly before in completely different circumstances, and had a brief and friendly chat about bike helmets as disguises
3. Thursday. At the pool with our granddaughter, I was paying to get in, and having trouble making my phone make the payment. I made several attempts that produced only clicks, no card image. The young man behind the counter – without a hint of pity, contempt or disdain – said, ‘You have to click twice. You’re pressing the volume button at the same time and taking screen shots.’ Quick as a flash, I said, ‘I knew that,’ and we were in business. (Just now I deleted three photos of the pool’s Covid sign-in screen from my phone.)
4. Thursday evening, the eve of garbage collection, I took our non-compost food scraps out to put in the appropriate council bin. Two women of a certain age were going through the recycling bins from our whole complex of units, collecting bottles and cans that can be redeemed. ‘Having any luck?’ I called to them. People mostly don’t seem to grasp the actual words I use in my opening gambits. ‘Bring it over here,’ one of them replied. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘This is rubbish.’ ‘Okay,’ she said, and they both lost interest in me.
5. Friday evening. Walking beside the Cook River, just as I was despairing of making contact with anyone we passed, a couple of tiny dogs in a house yard took noisy exception to a harmless-looking Labrador who was approaching us with a woman in tow. The Labrador ignored the hostile yappy dogs. The woman looked our way apologetically. I said, ‘Your dog’s handling that well.’ She said, ‘Poor thing.’
6. & 7. Saturday midday. As we were heading out on a walk, two youngish women were reading the small explanatory board near our front entrance and admiring the handsome Victorian Italianate house that is part of our complex of units. ‘So it is a residence,’ one of them said. I seized the opportunity. ‘Yes, it’s a residence,’ I said,. ‘There are 43 units.’ They looked interested. ‘It used to be a hospital, then a home for unmarried mothers.’ And I pointed to my favourite phrase on the board: ‘young women who gave their affections unwisely.’ Someone said (remember, this is the week when Australian parliamentary leaders seem to indicate that sexual assault is beneath their serious attention), ‘Always blame the women.’
   8, 9, 10, 11. Saturday a little later. On my way home I passed an auction in the street a block away from the recently reopened Enmore Theatre. The auctioneers rolled up contract came down on 2.3 something million dollars, and the crowd of stickybeaks began to disperse. I checked the poster at the front of the house – a corner terrace with 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom – and, this being Sydney, fell into easy conversation with a young woman who was also checking it. Then another woman and two men joined in. Someone’s phone told us that the median price for a three bedroom house around here is 1.6 million. We variously commented on how happy the vendors must be, likewise their neighbours, and how prohibitive the housing market was. My impression that one couple, possibly both, were hoping to buy something sometime and weren’t being cheered. But maybe like me they were just passers-by seizing a chance to speak to strangers.

Running total = 31.

We started the week with an overnight trip to Canberra to see the Know My Name exhibition at the National Art Gallery (apologies to Canberra friends we didn’t contact). The exhibition is fabulous, from the Djampi Weavers to Linda Lee. And the trip provided lots of opportunities to add to my meeting-people challenge. See last week’s post for the brief description of the challenge. This week’s exchanges range from tiny to trivial, but in most of them I made a decision to initiate contact, and it seemed mostly to be welcomed. Which is the point of the challenge.

1. Sunday morning, 21 February. At a petrol station near Mittagong, as I went to pay, I passed a woman wiping her hands on paper towel with exaggerated gestures. She said, to the world in general, ‘It’s slimy.’ I stopped to ask, ‘What is?’ ‘The hand sanitiser,’ she said. ‘ I thought it would be slimy, and it was.’ She said this through teeth clenched around a credit card, which she was evidently protecting from the slime. I made a sympathetic noise and went on my unsanitised way.
2. Sunday afternoon, in Canberra. As we approached what turned out to be Reconciliation Place, we passed a 50-something white man who had just been looking at a piece of carved stone. He greeted us with a smile and nod that felt a little like the solemn acknowledgements people make at the start of funerals. We reciprocated, then read the inscription on the stone and understood his demeanour. In case the image isn’t legible, it says: If we want to break away from the colonial past, and begin anew, then we have to walk together – hand in hand and side by side – as a truly reconciled nation. Gatjil Djerrkura OAM, 2004

• Sunday evening, the Jonathan-is-an-idiot moment, which I hope won’t be a regular feature. I ordered pappardelle with beef ragú. When the waiter asked how the meal was, I said, truthfully, that it was excellent, but I thought pappardelle were butterfly shaped pasta. She looked astonished, and told me I was wrong. I checked on my phone, and discovered that butterfly pasta is farfalle, and pappardelle, named from pappare, to gobble, are exactly the broad ribbons I had just enjoyed. When I paid, I told the waiter my phone had discovered that she was right.
• Sunday. In Canberra you can have more than one person in a lift. We shared a ride with a young man in a grey T-shirt that said, in neat black lettering, ‘THIS IS NOT A PHASE‘. He was observing rigorous modesty of the eyes – or willing us out of existence, take your pick. When we stopped at his floor, I said, ‘Nice T-shirt.’ He flashed a big smile and said, ‘Thanks.’ I didn’t get to ask him what THIS was.
• Tuesday morning. When I arrived at the physiotherapist a woman was taking up a lot of space in the waiting room, fussily and vocally searching for her mask (still required in the treatment rooms). She was the kind of perfectly nice person I tend to avoid. When I came out from my treatment, she was still there, sitting quietly. I realised I didn’t have my backpack, and made a little fuss of my own. She said, quite calmly, ‘You’ve probably left it in your car, love.’ I agreed and thanked her. She was right.
• Wednesday morning, 6.30. In the change room at the pool, there were just two of us, me dressing after a swim, and a young man undressing before one, mostly with our backs discreetly to each other. As we headed off in our different directions, I remarked that it was good to have proper hot water at last (the pool management have used the Covid lockdown to fix the plumbing). The young man looked as if he had no idea what I was taking about, but gave a friendly smile and said something about it being a good way to wake up.
• Thursday afternoon at the Australian Museum, a young woman gave a tiny presentation about volcanoes to a group of preschool-age children, which culminated in an eruption generated by a mixture of vinegar and sodium bicarb. I couldn’t resist telling her about my own volcano demo from years ago, in which I demonstrated what happens when phosphorus is exposed to air. As the classroom filled with clouds of white smoke, I said, ‘You know, I think this gas is poisonous,’ and you’ve never seen a room empty faster than that one. The young woman was more shocked than amused. ‘Were you a science teacher?’ she asked. ‘I was that day,’ I said. I don’t think it was the beginning of a friendship.
• Thursday a little later, as my companions were in the ladies, I was sharing a small vestibule with a woman with a baby on her front, two small children playing with balls, and a brightly coloured cart filled with childhood paraphernalia and crowned by a large umbrella. In the interests of talking to strangers I asked about the cart. She explained that it was invented by a Brisbane woman, and made life so much easier on an outing, able to carry two children and a baby plus food, change of clothes, toys, picnic gear, and more. It was easy to pull along, as the boy, aged about four, was happy to demonstrate. The only problem was that it didn’t fold. Nonetheless, she takes it on the train. I looked for the contraption online later, with no success.
• Friday morning, breakfast in a nearby cafe. My companions each order smashed avo. I ask for an almond croissant. The waitress says to me, ‘Good choice.’ One of my companions says, ‘What, so ours wasn’t a good choice?’ She doesn’t miss a beat: ‘The avo is always excellent, but if you’re going to depart from the written menu, the almond croissant is wise.’ I say, ‘You should be a diplomat,’ then I worry that she may have felt a bit harassed as she says, very softly, ‘Just doing my job.’
• Friday afternoon, in Kinokuniya to buy a birthday gift. I know which comic book I want but can’t find it. I stop a masked man and tell him that while I can see the huge omnibus of the title I’m after I can’t see the individual books. He is delighted to show me the way. I’m not sure if this one counts, because I’m fairly sure that beneath the mask was the face of the man who had originally recommended the series to me back in December.

That’s encounters 11 to 20 – I couldn’t figure out how to number this lot and also include the image for encounter Nº 2.

Partly because of Covid isolation, I’ve decided to take up a challenge someone proposed recently: to meet 500 new people in the remainder of this year. I’m defining ‘meet’ to include minimal encounters, but there has to be some reciprocity and at least a remote possibility of more to come. I can count people serving in shops, but they have to be new to me and the encounter has to be more than purely transactional. Electronic encounters don’t count. I plan to do a weekly blog post, listing 10 or so encounters each week. This will mostly to be a chronicle of moments that would usually pass unremarked. I don’t expect it to be hard to reach 500. Here goes with Week One.

1. Sunday 14 February, morning. The Emerging Artist and I were on a morning walk in Newtown. As we cut through the Matt Hogan Reserve, a tiny patch of green between Camden and Alice Streets, we passed a man walking two small dogs. The EA and the man nodded good morning to each other. I greeted him separately, and he replied, with a noticeably broader smile, acknowledging that I was a second separate greeting, not a mere extension of the first. I’d guess that he was Polynesian.
2. Monday morning. I bought a soy and linseed loaf at our local artisanal bakery. The woman behind the counter, new to me, was extra cheerful. We had a little bit of banter when the card reader took two attempts to register my payment. ‘It happens to me too,’ she said. In retrospect she may have been reassuring the old guy, but it just felt friendly at the time.
3. Monday afternoon. There were men in the sauna, ignoring each other comprehensively, barely even a nod exchanged as each one came in (I tried). Then a fourth, a young man, joined us. After a beat, I rose to the occasion, pointed to the Covid-safety notice on the door, and broke the silence: ‘There’s a limit of three people in the sauna.’ He looked me in the eye and said, quite politely, ‘Oh, is there?’ and gave no sign of intending to move. Of all the possible responses, many of which would have been civil, I moved straight to: ‘Well someone has to leave, and since you’re not going to, I will. And,’ pointing an angry-old-man finger at him, ‘you’re a fucker.’ Everyone else remained impassive as I picked up my towel and left. No one said these encounters had to be pleasant, or that they had to make me look like a decent person.
4. Tuesday afternoon. The EA and I had a meeting about financial matters with two people, one of whom we’ve known for years (decades?). The other we were meeting for the first time. When we emerged, we agreed that we both felt the new person was warm and approachable, as well as inspiring trust in her professional competence. That is to say, above and beyond the business of the meeting we liked each other.
5. Wednesday, lunch: There were six of us at lunch, including was one man I’d not met before. This man revealed that he has taken the advice of his daughters and stopped climbing ladders so as not to tempt fate. I was a little surprised, and asked his age. 78, four years older than me. And not only has he stopped climbing ladders, but he receives an age-care home-help package. His wife needs help with showering and mobility, but he himself hasn’t got any discernible disability. Another chap, just my age, said he had been inspired by to get a package himself, and there seemed to be consensus that I should be applying for one as well. Start lining up help now, was the message; don’t wait until the need is urgent. We had a lot of other pleasant and interesting conversation, but this is the place where he made his mark on my psyche, and I’m guessing that my response of shocked denial made a similar mark on his.
6. Wednesday, also at lunch was a man I hadn’t seen since 1964, so I’m counting him as new. Conversation ranged far and wide, but the most interesting exchange (to me) was about the false fingernails on his right hand. They were strikingly shiny and long in a way I’ve never seen on a man’s hand before. The closest I’ve come is one very long fingernail on a Balinese customs officer. In that case I assumed the fingernail was there for purposes of playing a musical instrument, and it turned out that was the case here too. He had learned to play the guitar finger-picking and couldn’t bring himself to use a plectrum. He could have made a decent stand-up routine out of his first visit to a nail parlour.
7. Wednesday evening, at the movies. During the ads, a young man arrived and sat a couple of seats away from us. I leaned across and said, ‘If you’re uncomfortable about us not having masks on, we can put them on no worries.’ ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said, ‘we’re not worried.’
8. Thursday afternoon. We were at the pool with our three-year-old granddaughter. One of several fleeting encounters was with a woman who was here with her 10-month-old daughter. After a bit of parallel play, we actually spoke to each other. We swapped children’s names, but not ours. Then the rest of her mother’s group arrived and we went back to our separate lives.
9. Thursday afternoon, still at the pool, we were joined by a friend with her 10-month-old son. I’ve met him briefly twice before, but it’s not much of a stretch to say he was new to me and so can be included in this chronicle. I was bowled over by the quality of his attention. Several times, he held my gaze with solemn concentration for a good ten seconds – it was like being checked out for some unnamed quality and, mercifully, fund satisfactory. Later, in our living room, he cheerfully crawled to me and I felt that I was now one of his crew.
10. Saturday morning, we were at the pool again, without little ones. It was busy at 8 o’clock, one whole section taken up by a noisy aquarobics class, some lanes reserved for ‘squad’, and other with barriers up at the halfway mark. Just as we were about to enter the slow half-lane, a young man removed the sign and replaced it with one saying ‘Swimming Class’. I asked him if there was anywhere we could swim lengths. From the way he looked around I could tell he was a swimming teacher and not a pool employee, but he made a mental effort on my behalf, and pointed me to the couple of free half-lanes at the other end. I thanked him, warmly I hope.

I’m surprised at how few of these encounters I’ve had in a week, but interested to notice how many opportunities I’ve missed. The outstanding missed opportunity was midweek. I noticed the brilliant multicoloured shoes being worn by a woman sitting opposite the Emerging Artist and me on the bus, and then realised that her whole outfit was bright, daring and brilliant: a pink dress with shiny bits, etc. I toyed with saying something to her, but decided against it – but then as I was getting off at our stop, I realised that the EA had stopped to compliment her. She told me as we walked home that it would have been inappropriate for me to say anything – only women are allowed.

Is this too boring to blog about? The comments are open.