Impossible to hear for the wheels

She told me that there seemed to be an exact octave between the rumbling of our pull-along suitcase wheels on the asphalt and the whirring of two young guys who passed us on their skateboards, one carrying a chair and the other a long cardboard tube that could also, she thought, have also been making a sound as it moved, but one that was impossible to hear for the wheels.

The incident last week between Clyde and Blacktown

Luckily, when the two people at either end of the carriage talked through wires to people they made out were listening and responding, the elderly man, who continued to murmur his relentless and ever intensifying explanations was not so noticeable, but as each of the wire talkers left the train, something progressively lifted from our bodies, I've been trying to explain in my statement to City Rail, as a footnote to the incident last week between Clyde and Blacktown.

Wing women

Afterwards I described her as someone who, as you answer the question about your ideas for a show she hears you are planning (the question that she seems to have asked so reluctantly that the words hardly moved past her mouth), she raises her cheeks to her eyes in an expression of such complete irritation and disgust that later, when she wishes you well as she leaves -- and with a genuine warmth -- you find that your own face will not obey you, and your attempts to wish her the same make it clear to everyone else in the café that you are the more surly of the two of you by far.

Pedalling bubbles

We all stiffened as she rode barefoot through us on the footpath on Broadway, her ribbed face determined on pedalling so that the hoisted rainbow wheel at her back would continue to dispense the bubbles as we waited for the lights to tell us to walk.