The city of broken glass

The festival of broken glass is held every weekend and on public holidays. A festival with a strong community focus, it encourages the breaking of glass on any firm, and public, surface.

There are many proven locations: train stations and subways, footpaths, schoolyards, roads, laneways, roundabouts, beach esplanades, and sports grounds.

Historically the main festival precincts have always been immediately outside pubs, nightclubs and other late-night entertainment venues.

The festival’s traditional colours are brown and green, though transparent materials are also very popular amongst younger participants. Nearly always celebrated in darkness the festival often concludes warm-up events such as after-work drinks, sporting victories (or defeats), parties and other social occasions.

There are few formalities but it is usually anticipated that bottles are emptied of their contents before being dashed to the ground or the wall. With no rules or regulations to guide them, participants merely have to act upon a primal urge to turn a single, smooth and whole object into many, many smaller and sharper objects.

The urge can be triggered by anger, belligerence, boredom, despair, frustration, lust or jubilation. In turn, these emotions can impact on whether the bottle – previously an object of much desire – is dropped or thrown or even kicked.

The spectacular sound of the breaking glass has subtle variations. The glass may bang or pop or crack or clink.

(It should be acknowledged that occasionally glass is broken accidentally but this is not regarded as being in the spirit of the festival.)

Some participants, still of a relatively clear mind, generously leave their own bottles intact but place them carefully behind the wheel of a parked vehicle. The unsuspecting driver, intent on leaving an entertainment venue after a long evening, simply reverses over the bottle, crushing it easily.

While freshly broken glass shines and glistens under city streetlights it is even more beautiful in the morning sun as the brown and green specks sparkle with their various hues: reds and oranges, limes and yellows. Even the transparent shards will be revealed to have prismatic colours.

The festival’s administrators employ streetsweeping trucks to collect much of the broken glass so that participants have a clean surface the following weekend. The organisers also appreciate the efforts of cyclists who collect festival fragments in their tyres. The cyclists take great pride in their role and can often be seen by the side of a road diligently, almost reverentially, removing a fragment before tending to a punctured tube. It is a civic duty much cherished.

Even more dedicated are those who walk or jog along the concrete esplanades of suburban beaches, collecting festival mementoes in their thongs or sandals or runners. Some of these people have been heard to hum the 1980s song Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes as they walk by the beach.

A step beyond that level of loyalty are the hard-core festival afficionadoes who will even tread barefoot along beach esplanades, believing that is the natural thing to do after going for a swim.

The absence of long weekends and warm weather through the middle of the year would seem to be an opportunity for this long-running festival to take stock, to slow down. However, a particular weekly winter sport in this city, as well as the seeming proliferation of bars and clubs, always ensure the festival of broken glass continues through the colder months.

The Herald Sun, April 2008

Drought grass

School’s back. Here’s a story The Age ran five years ago, when the weather was dry. Very dry.

THE DROUGHT is over at our school. The grass is greener now, brighter and softer than anything that rain and sunshine and soil could ever bring. Children play happily before, during and after school. And neighbours play there too, as early as seven in the morning, as late as nine in the evening.

Everything has changed since the September school holidays last year when two play areas were transformed from barren dustbowls to dream-like fields of green.

It was a sign of the times, of an over-crowded playground and of not enough rain. Real grass couldn’t possibly grow under several hundred pairs of feet, so the school invested in artificial turf. Drought grass, I call it. Lawn that has no seeds, no roots, no seasons. Grass that never grows.

In a way it is a shame it has come to this,  that we have to resort to trying to imitate nature. But the schoolchildren and the neighbourhood have taken to it, like ducks to water.

The larger play area, 50 metres by 25 metres and long-nicknamed The Nullabor, has become a soccer pitch. It used to be a footy ground of sorts. The kids would improvise and create their own oval: the two poplars at one end were goal posts and the space between the gum tree and the brick barbecue were the other goal posts. In summer the barbecue became cricket stumps and the poplars were part of the boundary.

There was even a grandstand, if you let your imagination take over: a small amphitheatre of old telephone poles on the ground and lovely big ancient rocks.

But that’s all gone now, replaced by a smooth, neat rectangular soccer pitch. It’s an arresting sight, there’s no doubt about that. A surprise to the eyes. And there are no poplar shoots to trip over. No poplars at all. (The local magpies looked lost for a while, waiting for the new peppercorns to grow.)

The smaller play area is almost triangular in shape, with the three points of the triangle softened and curved. This area is also green, but blue and tan and white as well. There’s a two-lane 100 metre running track, markings for games like handball, and a white diamond for your choice of rounders, t-ball, softball or baseball.

This smaller area used to be a bit of a footy ground too but it was also hard and rough and dusty. And it had a steel grate right in the middle of it.

The schoolchildren flock to these areas now, these oases. They love the softness and the safety, the colour and the novelty of it all. They do handstands and cartwheels. They play soccer and cricket. Some even sit and talk.

And the neighbours play here as well. On two Sunday mornings I’ve seen a group of twenty-year olds from up the street playing lawn bowls at seven o’clock.

On weekends I’ve seen toddlers on training wheels riding across the smooth grass, knowing it won’t hurt if they fall.

I’ve seen teenagers sprinting around the tan track, resting and sprinting again. Smiling and filming each other with their mobile phones, and saying Let’s put this on YouTube! (And they did.)

I’ve seen two blokes in their forties kicking a footy around after work. In the heart of summer. Their ageing knees and ankles can relax on this turf. Their footsteps find a certainty that cannot be found at the parched local footy ground.

Kids play soccer there, seemingly all weekend, dreaming of playing for Manchester United or Melbourne Victory. They kick off their runners and play barefoot, their soles blackened by the plastic dirt between the plastic blades of grass. As the sun sets they finally go home.

When the fields are empty I take more notice of the young peppercorns and the native shrubs that border half of the soccer pitch. These plants, along with the native grasses by the grade six classroom and the hedge by the school’s front entrance are still crying for water. No plastic leaves, no artificial branches, no polystyrene roots will replace these plants if the drought goes on and on and on.

And I wonder: if the drought really does break – across Melbourne, across Victoria, across Australia – will the burst of greenery bring out the people, bring out the neighbours?  Will people flock to parks and ovals and play, just as so many have been drawn like a magnet to our school’s fake fields of green?

Will the falling rain bring us out of our homes, out of our shells, out of our selves? Will people want to play and laugh and run and do cartwheels as they smell and feel the real green grass, as they come and see the real thing?

May we happily play on the drought grass but may we not forget the need for rain, for dark brown soil, for wet green blades. The need for roots that hold onto the earth. The need for puddles in the goal-square and mud in the middle of the ground. May the rain waken us from the green dream and remind us what it’s like to have real dirt and real grass between our toes.

The Age 3 March 2007

The way they were

The Big Issue has just published The way they were, the story of how a chance encounter on a suburban street filled some gaps in a family history.

Here’s an excerpt:

My mother and her seven siblings used to  live and play and laugh and squabble here in this street. They used to climb the young plane trees, play hopscotch on the road, run up and down the footpath. Right here, where I’m standing on a quiet sunny morning. In a house knocked down in my lifetime, they argued with their father and sang with their mother.

The full story is in edition 401 of The Big Issue (28 Feb – 12 March), available from Big Issue vendors. The story features artwork by Eirian Chapman.

Standing still

Eureka Street has just published a story about standing still, about school-crossings and dawdlers, about love and daydreaming.

Here’show it starts:

Some people laughed when I said I’d become a school crossing supervisor. They saw the big orange ‘lollipop’ Stop sign. They saw the daggy uniform. They saw the bizarre image of a bloke stopping peak-hour traffic with not much more than a whistle and a stick.

I’d see a father waiting at a corner 50m from the school, lovingly watching his young daughter make her way to the crossing.

I’d see a big sister holding a little sister’s hand, all the way up the street, across the road and into the schoolyard.

You’ll find the whole story, and some kind comments, at Eureka Street.

 

Flagging one’s intentions

Here is a story The Age ran three years ago, just before Australia Day.

 

IT’S FLUTTERING in the breeze, up there beside the gum tree. It’s flapping in the cold wind, mocking me, goading me, maybe trying to shame me.

It’s flagging its intentions in red, white and blue.

I looked out the back window a few weeks back and there it was, atop a white pole in a neighbour’s yard. Two doors down, in one of the houses of the next street, those that back onto the backyards of my street.

Usually I can pick and choose when confronted by patriotism. I can turn the page of the newspaper or change the channel on the television, or stand silent in the stadium.

But the neighbour’s permanent statement is harder to ignore, the colonial colours clashing against the greenery, almost subverting the tones and hues of the native trees.

Each day those trees help tell me which way the wind is blowing. But it’s a different wind that blows that cloth, that furls and unfurls the material.

It’s a wind that wants to say something more than It’s a north-easterly this morning, or It’s a gentle southerly today.

Why does such a simple thing bother me? On a superficial level I wonder about council by-laws – do you need a permit for this structure, just as you need a permit to paint your front fence in your preferred colours?

Flags are common enough on civic buildings but only appear sparingly outside homes. And how many are in backyards as opposed to front gardens?

The position of the neighbour’s flag makes it largely a private act rather than a public statement. And planting it in the backyard means it could be amongst other national symbols – the barbecue, the shed, the Hills Hoist, the eucalypt.

So why does this expression of patriotism make me uneasy? Because patriotism in the wrong hands and the wrong minds can lead to dangerous places.

And because the flag probably says more about myself than my neighbours.

Unlike me, my neighbours may have profound reasons for pride in their nation. Perhaps family members died at war. Perhaps the neighbours have travelled the world and appreciate this country all the more for doing so. Perhaps their ancestors settled in this country long ago, from Europe or Asia or elsewhere, and now they cherish the luxuries of living here.

I, though, have led another life, hardly moving across the country and never beyond the border.

What if the neighbour’s flag were different colours? What if it was, say, black and red with a yellow circle in the middle? I would be more comfortable with that because although it would still remind me of my little life, it would be a rebellious statement, a challenge to these suburban backyards and us who live in them.

This land is a blessed land. I know that just from watching a few minutes of the world news. But the neighbour’s flag, like those painted on faces and fingernails at sporting events, muddies my thoughts.

If you have great pride in your own country what do you then think of other countries?  Are your thoughts of them diminished? Can one nation be better than another? Can its people be better than other people?

The neighbour’s flag is fluttering in the breeze, while I’m out in the back garden pulling out weeds. It’s there all the time, furling and unfurling in the wind, trying to tell me something.

 First published in The Age, 19 January 2009

The fallen woman

The Big Issue has just published The Fallen Woman.

Here’s an excerpt:

The young woman with the baby walked over to the petrol bowsers and tore white paper from a dispenser. The middle-aged woman wrapped it around the fallen woman’s hand: around a ring or two. There wasn’t too much blood now. More on the footpath than on her soft skin.

The full story was published  in The Big Issue, 393, 8-21 November 2011, with an illustration by Michelle Caplan.

Life saver

Online magazine Eureka Street has just published a new story.

Here’s an excerpt:

The doctor told Clyde he had glandular fever and needed a real rest, maybe a spell in a nursing home. ’I asked, But what about Vera? Who will look after Vera?’ Behind his glasses his eyes reflect the bruise of the question.

Read the full story at Eureka Street