they ran out of money before they could buy a battery for it
Somewhere I read about this Sydney commuter who spends five hours every day going to and from work. Five hours a day! Twenty-five hours a week! One thousand three hundred hours a year! (excluding annual leave which is only half as long).
I was thinking about this as I waited to board the bus on a mist-shrouded Wednesday morning last week. I was going to spend the same five hours sitting on the bus before reaching Sydney. I had fortified myself with a pile of sandwiches and a thermos full of hot tea and Adeline Yen Mah's "Watching the Tree", all of which I'd finished by the time I stumbled off the bus at Sydney's Central Station five hours later.
Which was a pity because I had nothing more to read when I stepped onto the train to North Sydney. All my fellow-passengers - and I mean ALL! - were starring mesmerically at their smartphones. I could've been a bit of a dag and drop my daks and they wouldn't have looked up (on second thought, that may have more to do with my advanced age ☺)
On entering the old watering-hole, the Blues Point Hotel, I encountered more people and more noise than at a Nuremberg Rally - and it was only Wednesday night! What do all those people do on a Saturday night?
And the place absolutely reeked of money: the streets were lined with late-model European cars and there was the odd guy wearing an Adani suit (did I get that right or did my taste for Italian clothes get mixed up with my distaste for corrupt Indian coal-miners?) Still, you get the idea.
My room, at $120 a night and well-remembered from previous visits, was decidedly more down-market with just three hooks on the wall in lieu of a wardrobe - speaking of which, the loo was down the hallway and terribly reminiscent of my days in a certain bygone boarding-house.
John had already arrived and greeted me with a beer in his hand. In all the excitement, I forgot the PIN on my credit card but was saved from sleeping in the street by the barmaid's suggestion to 'paywave' the total of $240 in three easy lots below the level at which a PIN is required. She was just over legal age but certainly knew her way around PINs! Thanks, Daniella! We should've met fifty years ago and done a Bonnie and Clyde!
For the next few hours John and I did a credible impersonation of two grumpy old men as we ate our meal and drank our beer until it was time for him to drive home in his Mercedes which must've been one of those new autonomous cars as I didn't think he was still in a state to drive it.
I barely managed to climb up the stairs to my spartan room before falling into bed for another dose of Philip Adam's 'Late Night Live' while all around me the skyline lit up and I fell asleep in the glow of FUJITSU and ZURICH and MERITON neon signs, all in different colours.
More about tomorrow tomorrow!
