Bondi Beach on a Wednesday night; George Street on a Friday night

I went over to see Tim at Bondi – he was housesitting this cool place – and we went for a swim on Bondi Beach at ten o’clock at night. It had been raining, the footprints on the sand were eroded and dimpled, the beach was almost empty; certainly there was nobody swimming. The sand was cold on our bare feet. We walked along the hard sand down by the water and I taught Tim how to spot rips, how you had to look for the dark water and the small, irregular and choppy waves. We walked along the shore looking for a good spot, and all the talk of rips made me nervous – what did I know of rips on Bondi Beach? It wasn’t like the beach I grew up on...

We found the spot that seemed best. Tim was reluctant – it wasn’t a particularly warm night – but I hadn’t been in the surf all summer. I took off my shirt and made my way in. The waves were gentle, there wasn’t much of an undercurrent, but the water was brisk – I went weehee!, and wowsers!, and zip! I laughed hysterically from the shock of the cold. But it was, as they say, alright once you got in. Tim came in – my rip lesson had made him nervous, he was spotting rips everywhere with his new knowledge, it all looked to him sort of like what I’d described – the whole ocean was dark, all the surf irregular. We bodysurfed some waves, caught a couple of good ones – where the wave takes you, suddenly, and you go woosh off towards the shore – it was really nice to swim.

When we got out the air seemed suprisingly warm. Walking back, there were some disreputable looking teenagers in a huddle on the boardwalk, they made me smile, they reminded me of me. I said to Tim that I wasn’t sure about Bondi Beach – how it seemed somehow inauthentic to me, as if it was all dressed up to look like Bondi Beach. Tim said that was every landmark – he mentioned the Sydney Harbour Bridge – and I guess he had a point.

On Friday night I went into the city to see the final Candle Records show at the Metro, with Tahlia. In the bar area I looked around, and even though I knew nobody, everybody seemed slightly familiar, as if I’d seen them or their dopplegangers at other, similar shows. I tried to explain this to Tahlia, she didn’t understand.

“Look,” I said. “There’s the aging hipster in his thirties who’s going bald and has shaved his head. There he is again! There’s the fashionable Asian girl with the glasses and the scarf. There’s the guy with the brown jacket and the muttonchops.”

She started to understand.

“There’s the weedy guy with the buzz haircut that looks sort of like a butch lesbian,” I continued. Tahlia didn’t think there was such a type, or that this made any sense. “There’s the grey-haired guy with a rat’s tail!” I exclaimed, delighted. There is no such type, although unfortunately there was such a person. I was just being stupid.

We watched a few bands, then snuck a look at the running list and realized there was still four hours to go until The Lucksmiths, and we didn’t really want to see the bands in between. There’s only so much amiable folk-rock you can handle at one sitting, and four more hours of it was entirely too much. My back was hurting, Tahlia’s leg was hurting; we went out to the bar area and realized that while we would like to see the Lucksmiths, we couldn’t see ourselves lasting through all the bands in-between.

We tried to think of something else to do. I suggested we go to Time Zone and play air hockey (I love air hockey). We left the Metro and crossed the street, but Time Zone didn’t seem to be there anymore. We saw, back on the other side of the street, right next to the Metro, something called Galaxy World, and crossed the street again (I suppose this street-crossing will seem like arbitrary detail unless I mention that Tahlia was having difficulty making it across George Street in the time alloted by the little green man, due to her recently broken leg.)

Galaxy World was disapointing to me. I like video arcades, not so much for the coin operated video games as for the sheer thrill of the sensory overload. Galaxy World had that, but it didn’t have an air hockey table. To me this is against the spirit of video arcades – they traditionally have an old air hockey table shoved to the back somewhere, for dinosaurs like me. (There was a single pinball machine in one dark corner – unplugged, and with an out of order sign on it.) Instead they had puri machines – at least a dozen – and twenty or so skill testers. I couldn’t imagine why they needed so many skill testers. There was a giant skill tester, on which for five dollars a go you could try to manipulate the massive robot claw to retrieve for you a stuffed toy the size of a great dane.

I wasn’t tempted, but under other circumstances – when I’m not annoyed at them taking up space that could have been used for an air hockey table – I am something of a sucker for skill testers. I’ve never won anything on a skill tester, have never seen a prize in one that I’d even like to win, yet have wasted an embarrasing amount of money on them in my life. To those who doubt that skill testers actually test any skill, I say this: I once saw the King of the Skill Testers in action. He was at a suburban bowling alley, middle-aged and nothing much to look at. If his life had taken a different path he might have been a skilled surgeon. He had a young girl with him, a daughter or grandaughter, and for her he brought from a skill tester four small stuffed toys in four attempts. The girl wanted more, but through one squinted eye he sized up the lay of the remaining stuffed toys and declared with finality that none of them were in a gettable position. This man is something of a hero of mine. I would give a number of hard-earned skills to be casually brilliant at the skill tester – to nonchalantly step up to it and make the arthritic robot claw do my bidding.

On George Street, again, the kids in from the suburbs were out, the girls in short skirts and too much makeup, the boys in various ethnic uniforms of the night. I tried to think of something to do, difficult because Tahlia couldn’t walk very far. I spied a monorail station and suggested we take a ride. I like the monorail, even though it’s ridiculous, even though it goes nowhere useful and costs too much. Still, you can ride it for as long as you like on a single token. So we caught the lift up to the monorail station. The ticket attendant seemed delighted to see us, as if we were the first people to ride the monorail all night. We caught the monorail and rode it for a while in its giant pointless loop, looking out through the windows and into first floor offices and restaraunts, which is the Great Thing that nobody appreciates about the monorail: it is an informal tour of the first floors of the city centre.

We got off at Town Hall. Still obsessed by air hockey, I got this sudden delusion that there used to be a Time Zone by the police station and Alexander's. I left Tahlia momentarily and went looking for it, but there was no Time Zone – no police station, no Alexander's. It’s been a while since I used to work in the city centre, things have changed.

By the bus station an African busking group was singing Amazing Grace – there was this very small, fat and strange-looking homeless woman, maybe in her sixties, her breasts nearly coming out of her yellow top, who sat on a bus seat – she was so tiny her legs didn’t reach the ground – and she listened to them with her heavy-lidded eyes half-closed. In a novel, I’d never dare have the busking group be singing Amazing Grace, but that is what they sang.

*

There is about the city, now, on certain afternoons and in the magic hour, a feeling of autumn, it is there in the way the light hits the sandstone buildings, and there sometimes on days with clear skies and cool unhumid air. I am looking forward to Autumn, it is my favourite season in Sydney.

posted by Nicholas @ 11:30 PM