Black Spot - A short short story

Wendy had been collecting places around her home town. Specific sites where events had occurred. Significant events. These sites were now always to be approached with caution.

Curfew Street undulates down toward Wendy’s home, the opposing lanes separated by wide shrubby gardens which break at intersections for cars to access the cross streets. At one such intersection, Curfew Street crests and oncoming cars are not as apparent as on a straightforward road. Here an oncoming car, failing to notice Wendy's apparentness, once suddenly turned across her path giving her only enough time to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop two millimetres from the car which itself had frozen in panic realising what it had just done. Time stood still as Wendy’s heart tried to escape through her throat, and her motorbike and the little red car sat t-shaped, almost touching in the middle of the road.

Wendy now rode towards this crest each day with extra vigilance, watching for cars suddenly turning in front of her.

It was on Myopia Road, just after the roundabout, that a car ignored the stop sign and drove out of a side street, into the bike lane and into Wendy, knocking her sideways off her bicycle. She was grazed and bruised and had needed to lie down on the nature strip while passing witnesses with takeaway coffees yelled abuse at the flustered driver. Wendy, whose husband was out of town, had had to phone a friend for a for a lift home, where, after the shock had passed, she finally remembered how to cry, felt sorry for the driver and his beaten up old car and his shrunken elderly mother who had sat wrapped in a blanket in the back seat, head barely visible above the window line. She had no bike for over a week while they replaced the mangled back wheel.

Wendy added this t-intersection to her growing mental list of accident black spots, and now always slowed down on approach, alert for incoming cars, for drivers blind to cyclists, expecting the unexpected.

The cafe at Middlemarch Five Ways is unassuming. Plastic pot plants. Laminex tables. Hard chairs. This is where Wendy’s husband told her he “needed some time alone” and the world drained out through Wendy’s feet. She later learned that “need to be alone” meant “need to be with that woman” he’d met at the "incredible" interstate conference he’d not stopped talking about ever since.

Wendy did not subsequently approach that cafe with caution. She actively avoided it, and Middlemarch Five Ways, and her husband and that woman, and even her home town for a while when she fled to Alaska to see the midnight sun and taste reindeer.

100th Anzac Day

It was the sirens that woke me at 5.30am in the pre-dawn dark; speeding police cars, blue and red lights flashing across my ceiling.

But it was the incongruous sound of pedestrians, the clatter of many footsteps and groups of people chatting brightly as they passed my window, that drew me from my bed.

I looked out across the suburb. The beachside carpark, normally empty at this hour, was weirdly full. The dark streets were filled with cars, pacing, looking for parking spaces. Desperate opportunists helped themselves to the empty spots in our private off street carpark. A tide of people in warm clothing, carrying nothing but their mobile phones, all moved in the same direction. The quietest time of the morning bustled with human activity not even seen at the height of daytime peak. Yet it was dark. It was 5.40am.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the north end of the beach and everyone without exception was heading towards it.

Unlike the city2surf, the one day of the year that brings unprecedented crowds to Bondi, there had been no preparation, no weeks of signage warning us of the event, no street cordons set up the night before or media tents lined up along the beach. Yet this was something that everyone knew about. Except me it seemed.

Then I remembered.

Anzac Day. This was no normal Anzac Day, but the 100th anniversary which the media and press had been milking so relentlessly, that I had taken to actively avoiding the news. The commercialisation and hype around this tragic event – "that should never have happened" in the words of one returned digger – had reached heights of tasteless hyperbole, robbing the occasion of its real meaning and requiring a plastering on of forced pathos.

Now masses of people who in previous years slept through dawn on Anzac Day, were now driven by a nation-wide collective compulsion to hurry out of bed in the dark and rush to the beach.

I sat in my living room and tried to mediate while 20,000 people gathered at the RSL for the dawn service. I sat in silence and tried to empty my mind of all the judgement and needless mess. The crowd on the beach stood in silence. I imagine there were then speeches. I imagine they collectively remembered the horrible slaughter of Australian and New Zealand soldiers, at Gallipoli in 1915 and in all wars and conflicts.

An hour later in the cool blue day's sunlight – while the young radio DJ malapropped about today's "celebration" instead of "commemoration" – the crowds flowed back from the beach in groups and pairs, chatting, laughing, glowing with a warm communality of having shared an emotional experience.

And I wondered what had each of them learned?  

Dangerous words

It’s a perilous game this writing lark.

In the middle of working on a screenplay one day, I had to stop and head off to a meeting on my bike for an. But I didn’t really stop. I took the screenplay along with me in my head and spent the entire ride puzzling over a difficulty with one of the scenes.

I find repetitive movements like cycling and swimming are good ways to solve problems, and that’s not unusual. I know a writer who just paces while dictating to a typist. Joyce Carol Oates goes running. The exercise somehow frees up a part of the brain to work through things in a way that sitting at the desk cannot. Staring at the problem words can get my brain even more stuck. As if it digs into a fixed position as comfortably as my bum sets into the chair.

The problem with cycling out a problem, though, is that my head is off in a fictitious world, whereas city cycling requires all ones wits and groundedness. So there I was on that day, rolling down the street at a good clip, having a great idea for a solution, and I cycled straight through a red light.

Then I was pulled over by the police.

I was genuinely surprised when he told me I’d just run a red light, and felt pretty darned foolish while he wrote down all my details and made it clear that this was all going on record. But he made a point of not imposing a fine. He was a kind, gentle looking man, slightly greying, with concerned eyes creased at the corners with middle age. There was a little bit of Jimmy Stewart about him. Some police are judgemental and enjoy punitive acts - at least the ones on TV are. But this man said, “Imagine if a car had come through the other way.” He was genuinely concerned, and I did not tell him that I had been off with the fairies.

I’ve heard Writers describing the joys of escaping the real world into fantasy worlds of their own creation. But it does make one terribly absent minded. I questioned a writer friend about this, and with experience she’s come to rely on auto-pilot and a sixth sense to keep her out of danger while her head is in her latest novel. But the absent mindedness seems to come with the territory.

To my detriment, as I found last week when auto-pilot and muscle memory failed me. I set off on my bike thinking deeply about a character I was trying to create. It wasn’t until twenty minutes into the ride I realised I was not wearing my helmet. That thing I always wear. Inconceivable. I was far too far from home to go back for it and had an appointment. So I had to continue on. Except now that I was aware of my vulnerability, my riding method changed to slow and ultra cautious, taking every available off-road bike path where possible, and on the lookout for police. 1

But my mind drifted back to the writing, I stopped paying attention and in the middle of the city I was sprung by the police while waiting at an intersection. 2

“Where’s your helmet!” he yelled from the driver’s seat. He looked like one of those cranky types of police that enjoy catching people doing the wrong thing.

So I did my very best impersonation of someone touching their head, rolling their eyes in shock and horror and mouthing an expletive as if realising suddenly only now that they have forgotten their helmet.

I don’t know if he was fooled. The nature of their jobs, the behaviours they’re exposed to daily, probably mean Police have finely honed BS detectors.

I had to get off and walk my bike around the next corner. I made it to the appointment just in time, then to the nearest bike shop as soon as possible for a new helmet.
And not through fear of police, but through dread of head injury.

When I'm old and arthritic and can't cycle any more, I'm going to need my brain to write with.

__________
1. Where I live, helmets are as mandatory as seatbelts and lack thereof is a punishable offence.

2. I manage to always stop for red lights now.

southerly buster

I don’t see you for months. You just go away and leave me unable to sleep at night for missing you, needing you more and more as the Summer wears on.

You’re away so long I’ve forgotten what you feel like.

And then you just blow right in, no announcement, no warning, and turn my home upside down.

My rugs flung across the room and tangled up in lumps by the skirting. Things tossed off tables, important paperwork sent to the floor, out the window. You smash my favourite glass.

And I welcome you in with relief. As you brush my skin, I lean into the delicious sensation and relax. I sigh. I can breathe again.

Hello, old friend, I say, you were deeply missed.

But then I can’t concentrate for all the noise, the bluster, the constant moaning howls from my windows as if the house is haunted. The curtains flying in my face. My hair tangled, in my eyes, I pull strands out from between my teeth. You are relentless, all chaos and noise.

And I am overwhelmed and can’t take it anymore. Stop Shouting! Be still, I say. Can’t you just be here quietly, a gentle, soothing presence? Does it really have to be all or nothing? I love you, I need you and you’re driving me crazy.

KING OF THE YARD

I want to kidnap my neighbour's cat.

The neighbor lives in the apartment block opposite and is your ordinary, middle-aged guy. He's average height and was probably of average weight once, but with the man boobs and beer gut that come with age, it's gone pear-shaped.

He’s completely bald – by bad luck or choice, I’m not sure – and being unemployed, is always casually dressed; shorts and a wife beater in summer, track pants in winter. He has an ordinary Australian accent and a friendly grin for the neighbourhood kids who he banters with while watering “his” plants; the garden is common property but he is often out there radiating a commanding sense of ownership. It keeps him active, and despite the beer and the cigarettes, he seems to enjoy excellent health.

Yep, he’s just an average Aussie bloke.

Except for all the yelling.

Last week he yelled at length at a council worker who was trying to whipper-snip the nature strip.

He yells at passing pedestrians.
"YOU'RE A BAD MOTHER!" – taking issue with the way a woman crossed the street with her babies.

To which I heard her reply,
"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK," then, showing she did indeed care what he thinks,
"I'M A GOOD MOTHER!"

"YOU'RE A BAD MOTHER!" he just shouted back.

He yelled at my upstairs neighbour for a full five minutes because her smoke alarm had malfunctioned and beeped non-stop for the last eight hours, ruining his day.

Earlier I'd found him in our stairwell, barefoot as usual, trying to track down the noise.
"It's driving me so crazy," he told me (loudly), "I've had to start drinking."
It was 1 pm.

Then there was the power blackout. When my neighbour's electricity was finally restored after more than 24 hours he came out into the night to shout his euphoria.

"HOORAY! IT'S BACK! WE'VE GOT POWER! WOO HOO!! " he yellled, over and over. Then, needing to shout some more, he crossed the street to harass – I mean, thank – the technicians (still at work outside my building) in person.

"YOUSE GUYS ARE HEROS! THANK-YOU! YOU'RE THE BEST!" etc, etc, on and on and on.

The gloating was particularly galling for us on the other side of the road still without electricity. The technicians were still trying to work on that, which was not easy - on account of all the yelling.

But most of all he yells at his cat, or "my little daughter" as I overheard him describe her recently.

"NOOO-OH! NOOOO-OH! SHEBA!! SHEBA! NO, SHEBA, NO!"

He's an utter control freak whenever he lets her outside to poo and play. The minute a whisker gets past the boundary of the front fence he's on her case like a kelpie mustering a wayward sheep.

The yelling – or reign of terror as I saw it – started about a year ago when Sheba first arrived. I felt so sorry for that tiny kitten that I formulated a plan to befriend her then sneak her back to my house where no one would ever yell at or bully her again.

But the plan failed first time I tried to make friends. She sniffed my hand, scrunched up her stripy little face and ran straight back to the safety of my neighbour. He was embarrassed when I told him I could hear him shouting at her from my apartment.

"I'm just terrified she'll run out in the street and get run over," he explained. Loudly.

Anyway, I live right across the road. He'd have found out, inevitably.

And then I'm pretty sure he'd have done more than just yell at me.

Flag-waving... Shudder.

The apartment block opposite me is situated on a busy corner, with only an outward facing front yard. The residents seem to enjoy the publicness of their garden and love public displays of festivity. At Christmas their strobing fairy lights and animated santa were so bright they lit up my living room.

So, on Australia Day I looked out my window and saw the horror. Flag-Waving Patriotism, out loud and proud. A giant Australian flag tied to each corner fence. Little Australian flags festooned all over their front garden.

I had to quickly look away.

There were probably about thirty news articles in the paper that day on the topic of our controversial flag: Opinions on what it should look like; its history; what it means or doesn't mean; how, contrary to popular opinion, the Anzacs were not at all "fightingfor our flag" because our current flag was not finally decided upon and adopted until 1954.

I think my disapproval of flag-waving patriotism might have reared up when I visited the USA not long after September 11. The stars and stripes flew from every pole, was strung up in every window. Out in the suburbs and rural areas people had erected flagpoles in their front yards – sometimes unfeasibly enormous ones – and it struck me as something unseen in Australia. At the time I was glad we Aussies weren't like that. It seemed somehow – um... racist. The flag said to me "We are American, we are the best. You are other, you suck."

So when the flag-waving trend crept into Australia, my heart sank. There should be nothing wrong with being proud of the country you live in, but in a world already so polarised it feels even more polarising to be brandishing banners that define your tribe, that separate 'us' from 'others'.

If I had a flag it would be the flag of planet earth, for my tribe: the Human beings.

Oh, and the animals and plants too. And the microbes, and...

Okay, The Union Flag of all earthly life-forms.

Fat chance. Can you imagine getting everyone on earth to agree on the design?

little white dress

People often say to me "You're so fit!".

I'm not bragging, a friend said it to me just the other day, after I'd cycled across the city. (Whereupon I replied "But you're writing a novel" and grovelled humbly in her far more awesomeness).

I know I look fit. I exercise regularly.

But out on my bike today, wearing my official cycling lycra, I was overtaken – on the flat – by a curvy girl with not a hint of muscle tone in a little white broderie anglaise dress.

Bam! Another of my stereotypes challenged.

Okay, she was about 30 years younger than me. She probably slept like a baby last night and didn't wake up feeling like she was coming down with a cold. For all in know, she might have just had a double espresso. She might have been on the way to a date with a new love, and not on her way to work.

All's I'm saying is it's relative. I might very well be fitter than some, but certainly not as fit as I was, and I know because I remember what that felt like.