Dora Tells Good Stories - A Very Nice Suit

 

Dora joined me for coffee this morning.

Back in the 1960s, half a century ago, Dora had the shop next door on this small lane, laundry and dry cleaning.

She told me of a young man coming to pick up a dry cleaned suit, but without his ticket.

It was a nice suit.

Turned out the fellow had lent his Sunday best to a mate, so a wedding could be attended. The mate had done the right thing, kept the suit in one piece, dropped it in for dry cleaning first thing Monday morning on his way to work, but he’d never picked it up again.

It was a very nice suit. 

Dora wanted to hand over the coat hanger with pressed jacket and trousers on it to the young man at the counter, but she had to be reassured it was his, why couldn’t he just ask his friend for the ticket?

That suit was so nice that it had led to the mate meeting a sweet bridesmaid. The sweet bridesmaid had neglected to inform him she was married to a local gangster. The apartment where the ticket was sitting in a fruit bowl on the kitchen bench was a crime scene, the resident had been stabbed to death by an unknown intruder. 

The young man only owned one suit, he had to attend a funeral that weekend, just the same Dora felt uncomfortable with him walking away with the compromised ensemble. She asked him to think about it overnight, to come back the next day if he still wanted it back. 

A year later Dora donated a very nice suit to a church jumble sale.

She said, “clothes make the man”, finished her coffee, wandered off down Llankelly Place, peering into her old shop on her way, but not before apologising for boring me with her old stories.

Dora is a great artist.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Us And The Water

 

They say a watched pot never boils. That's an old Earth saying, from around 3000 years ago I reckon. Unless you've been to this backwards planet at the edge of the galaxy you'll have no idea what a pot is, or why it would boil, or why anyone would watch it.

I say it's a backwards planet, but we've learned to like it this way. Unintentionally, or perhaps intentionally, we've made it this way. Over a couple of hundred years most of our equipment has failed due to our poor maintenance. We've never seemed to get around to replacing it. Such things have never seemed important to us. So we boil water in pots.

Pots are metal vessels. We place these vessels over fires that we deliberately light and control. We do this to cook our food or to make hot beverages. I know it sounds weird. Why not just press a button on the AutoChef? Like I said, we like it this way.

You see, the water here is different to other water. It's alive. It communicates with us, in various ways.

It never liked the AutoChef. We could sense a feeling of indignation whenever the water was pumped into the machinery. The water doesn't seem to mind being boiled. It seems to enjoy feeling useful, being involved with us. And we like being involved with the water. We live together here, us humans and the water.

We collect the water from streams, boil it in pots, make tea, then communicate with the tea as we drink it. Because the water is always up for a chat, one way or another. 

The water is part of us, or we are part of the water, or something like that. We think it's some kind of telepathy, but we don't think about it too much. It doesn't seem to matter. 

The same Earth people who said that thing about watching pots boil used to write poetry about water, or use water as a way to describe other things. We figure water has always shared some sort of telepathy with humans. It's just stronger here, or we're more aware of it. 

Our entire lives are like poems. Poems unwritten, unspoken, instead lived. Us and the water. Beautiful and, well, poetic.

It's true though. If you sit and watch a pot of water over the fire, it never boils. The water gets to talking, wants to know what we're doing, dinner for the family or tea, or some warm water for bathing? Until we walk away and look elsewhere the water remains too distracted to boil, too interested in what we're going to do together next. We laugh about it, us and the water, but I guess it's the closest we've come to conflict since we ceased using detergents. 

I wonder if the Earth water all those years ago was trying to get through to its human friends and would take longer to boil when someone slowed down long enough to give it some attention?

Is the water here different, more telepathic? Or are we different, more able to hear? 

We like our backwards planet here at the edge of the galaxy, and our water, and our fire, and our pots. We flow together, an endless stream. Never the same water, never the same human, us and the water.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Dora Tells Good Stories - A Working Class Lioness

 

Dora joined me for coffee this morning.

Back in the 1960s, half a century ago, Dora had the shop next door on this small lane, laundry and dry cleaning.

She told me of one of the working girls running into the shop, terrified and unable to explain why. Dora hid the young woman among the dry cleaning at the back of the store, then stood at her counter and prepared to face whoever it was pursuing the frightened lass.

A working class lioness.

Dora seemed unaware of the courage she displayed in this moment. This was just what Kings Cross women did for each other. They didn’t need to be told about feminism, they were teaching the subject.

It turned out the aunt of the sex worker was taking a stroll along Darlinghurst Road, and the aunt didn’t know about this career choice, and the aunt would have told the mother. A gangster or a disgruntled customer could be dealt with, but disappointing mum was too much.

Dora laughed at her role in this faux drama, finished her coffee, wandered off down Llankelly Place, peering into her old shop on her way, but not before apologising for boring me with her old stories.

Dora is a great artist.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

The Tea Lady

She was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady.

Although that’s not strictly true. Her aunt had been the tea lady, but when the niece took over no one seemed to notice, they looked at her tea trolley, not her. 

She was an institution, or part of the furniture.

Management saw her as furniture and spoke openly in front of her, relying on a long tradition  of class confidentiality. She never breathed a word of what she heard, she was the tea lady, she knew her station.

However . . . if she overheard that someone was to be fired she couldn’t help herself, she always felt so bad for them, she would serve them first in the morning, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits. This became office folklore, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits, your last meal before being summoned to management, before execution.

He looked at her, not just her trolley. He asked after her aunt, he repaired her wobbly wheel, he thanked her every day.

When his ship sailed for the war he didn’t see her at the quay, waving and crying. 

He returned with medals and a wife, one knee that wouldn’t bend and a ringing in his ears that would never end. Over the next couple of years his medals tarnished, his English rose  withered, then died, partly due to the heat, partly due to the disappointment of marrying a dashing war hero then being married to a city office clerk.

She was the tea lady, the stoic tea lady. She waited one year and one day after the death of his wife before she tried to gain his attention. She brought him the hottest tea, a new tin of biscuits.

Thinking he was to be fired, he struck management on the nose, stormed out shouting something about not fighting for this, and she never saw him again.

She was the tea lady. She remained the tea lady until management saw her as an unnecessary expense, with coffee shops all around the staff could buy their own beverages. As part of a “family company” PR campaign the tea lady received a generous annuity. Her niece, who pushed a trolley on a new jet airliner, took her on trips to places she’d only heard about on the wireless, and heard about during the war.

One day, as she wheeled her luggage through a busy airport, she thought she saw him in the crowd, then realised the man she saw was the age he had been when she last saw him. Back when she was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady. She saw him repairing the wobbly wheel on her luggage trolley, then she was crying, and waving, but they were on the ship together, waving back at the crowd of strangers on the quay, and there was no war, and she was the tea lady and she’d always been the tea lady and she wished she could tell her niece not to cry for her. 

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Hard Land, Soft Death

 

It’s a hard land, you can’t die in summer, the heat bakes the earth so hard it will be months before anyone can bury you. And you can’t die in winter, the cold freezes the earth so hard it will be months before anyone can bury you.

So people here must live forever.

This hard land makes hard people. Lost travellers pass through, they seem soft, pathetic and fearful. They talk of soft things, oceans and trees and love, but their words fall on hard ears. 

These soft people can die at any time, they can be buried in the soft ground, mourned by soft tears.

The travellers return home, never speak of the hard land and try not to think of it. The hard people never speak of their visitors once they leave, they try not to think of them.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Was I A Good Man?

 

On the large oak table sits a small box that once contained a new pair of shoes. The photographs that litter the table must have come out of that box. The old man looks down at the braces attached to his trousers, lifts a picture of a young man wearing braces and standing in front of a shiny new car that looks kind of 1950s. He can't remember, but the man can guess who the young man is.

He doesn't remember anyone else who appears in the photographs. There is a woman, must have been his wife, young in some shots and older in others, and two young people who must have been his children. 

There are a couple of photos of a house, maybe he lived there? Most seem to have been taken on vacations, various people he can't recall standing in front of scenes he doesn't recognise.

The man somehow knows that he is dying. He wonders what sort of life he has lived. The photographs tell him nothing. None of the people in them are present to ask. Are they just in other rooms in this house? Or are they far away?

He doesn't know. 

Has the photographic evidence spread before him been collected by the prosecution or the defense? Is this a collage of time well spent, or of time passing?

A young woman carrying a tray, tea, efficiently places, pours, is about to leave when she feels she should say something. 

“Fond memories, sir?”

The man desperately wants to grab this woman, ask her just one question.

Was I a good man? 

Then he is distracted by the box and his last thought is about what sort of shoes came out of it.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Drinking Beer With Jesus

 

An English fellow, he had been working with A.I.D.S. orphans in Africa for six months, had landed in Sydney to prop up a bar, press the alcoholic pause button. He said he didn't want to talk about it.

Turned out he did want to talk about it. When I asked he told me there were only two qualifications required for the work he'd been doing. The first was the ability to hug children and mean it, and not just cute kids. Snotty kids, scabby kids, smelly kids, dying kids, they all knew when you hugged them and didn't mean it. The other required skill was the ability to employ a shovel efficiently.

Then we laughed. I remember him laughing loudly when I called The Simpsons The Simmos, he thought it was hilariously Australian. He had plenty of money, from what I could pick up he could have bought the bar with cash, but he allowed me to buy him a couple of beers. He knew I wanted to.

We stumbled down the stairs together, parted ways.

"There is only love and death", he said as he shambled up the street.






Parkstreet

Ko-fi