Vinnies

 

I went for a walk the other day and I visited the Vinnies of Crows Nest and found a jacket for the cool nights on the coast that I will be feeling in a week or so. It looked a little drab, being a man's jacket after all, and I thought a little trim would be the perfect pick-me-up. Finding a notions store on the lower north shore is not an easy task for the walking population. Nevertheless if you venture far enough and down just the right side street you never know what you will find. To cut the story short, I found too many choices but settled on a trim that is dark red and pale green bands gathered randomly to resemble flowers and leaves. Sufficiently feminine without too much prettiness! I also found a very nice bi-coloured beige ribbon that would have been ideal for a bit of an embroidery touch which I will save for Arizona. Boy it would have worked perfectly on the brown material I had to leave behind. - no regrets now!

I had a very interesting conversation in the Vinnies. The lady behind the counter was in conversation with a regular and they paused as I approached the counter. The employee took care of business, pointing out there were other jackets on sale. I thanked her but said I was on my way out of town. "Oh, where," she asked. "Back to America" I replied. Then started the conversation about how I didn't sound American. No but that is where I have been living. And out it popped, my dismay of finding Australia so changed. Of course I was talking to the kind of people I expected to find here. Friendly, outgoing, meeting-people kind of people. As I tried to move out of the store - sorry - shop, the other customer followed to continue the conversation. We chatted for a while and then I set off on the hunt for a notions store/shop/whatever.

I have been doing quite a bit of reading here Chez Son. The last book was written by Helen Barnacle about her life on heroin. An uplifting story if you can get through the "What it was like" part. Somehow the "what it is like now" is never told as grippingly as the descent into hell. Oh the Open Speaker-meetings of my other life. If I could find a way of telling it that would be funny or meaningful and not just a litany of the misery and heartache. But just how does one recount the day you came home from work at 11:00pm to find that he had this time taken all the groceries from the shop-before-going-to-work. Yep I could recount the anger, frustration and hunger but that would be an invitation to self to feel all those emotions again. No thanks. I would rather think about how I am in search of peace not excitment today.

Tomorrow I am going to find out why people in Australia today rarely smile as they go about in their apparent abundance.