A woman in the waiting room looks very sick. I rush inside to get the rubbish bin for her. She clutches it in her arms and throws up.
Shortly afterwards we discover the bin is not watertight. Yuck!
Note to self – next time leave the garbage bag in.
When I go back to the junction they have a much worse situation. Some poor woman has taken too much ICE and has had a psychotic melt-down on the platform. Police AND Ambulance. Makes my sicky bin story look a bit pathetic!
One of my regulars had clearly come off her bicycle. She was covered in dust and had a huge spike shaped red gash on her arm. With the train 2 minutes away she didn’t want me to do anything for her, but I insisted on getting her some damp paper towel to clean the still bleeding gash. Then as the train rolled in a complete stranger stepped up and offered the lady one of those big band-aids in plastic for her gash!
Thank you, stranger. Another person who understands if you think someone should help someone, perhaps you’d better be the one to do it.
I’m a firm believer in taking responsibility for making the world a better place through small daily acts. I’m getting more and more involved in Climate Change activism through a group called Climate for Change. http://www.climateforchange.org.au/ They encourage people to have everyday conversations about Climate Change concerns in order to encourage a ground swell of support for government action. The more of us pestering companies and M.P.’s the better. So now at when someone at the station says we’re having strange weather, I take my opportunity and say “This is what 1% climate change looks like.” I get some strange looks but also a lot of nods. Scarey to think what 2% will look like.
Those who know me, know I will read anything. Even the back of plastic water bottles found while tidying up the platform. This particular one assured me it didn’t just look good, it “had ancient wisdom” as well. That made me stop and take a closer look.
Apparently this is because it is “infused with native flower essences”. “Handpicked native flower essences” no less. Apparently Northern Australian indigenous people are involved in this process. I couldn’t resist taking a quick sniff of the remaining water, but I can’t smell anything floral. Perhaps that is because it is “refreshingly non-flavoured”
But I can smell something.
Ahh! The scent of male bovine manure.
P.S. School’s back and I had my first train surfers yesterday. They even wore balaclavas as they rode on the rear coupling. Guess the summer holidays are over.
D is studiedly bogan. He shakes my hand with an iron grip, tells me he’s from Gippsland and that in his depressed country town every third street has an ice-lab. Shades of “Winters Bone”. He describes getting drunk and driving down the main drag yelling at the shards (ice addicts.) Then he tells me he’s joined the local medieval re-enactment society and how much he likes fighting with the rattan canes. (thus exploding the whole bogan persona in my eyes.)
A pleasant young man. I’m not sure why he’s in Melbourne, but I haven’t pressed him in case he’s here with the Mental Health Service or the Juvenile Detention Service both of which have flats in the area. He may just be here to go to University. What I’d really like to know is his relationship with the two different young women he took the zoo the week before Christmas both of whom he seemed to be on arms-around-waist relations with. (Watch out for your station staff. They notice things.)
Today he looks a bit rough. Apparently, he drank too much on New Year’s Eve.
“I don’t remember much but my mates say I was wandering round Elizabeth Street in a man-kini singing and playing the guitar.
“Did people tuck money into your man-kini?” I ask.
“No,” he says, “But I do remember getting smacked on the arse a lot.”
The woman at the ticket machine seems to be putting money onto a dozen smartcards. At the same time she is batting away the 4 or 5 children who crowd around her, all poking at the touch screen, grabbing at the cards and bickering with each other. Around us the waiting room is thunderous with the sound of children and wall to wall with parents and prams. A toddler is wailing piercingly while another really, really needs a nappy change. A very tiny Jack Russell terrier is worrying my shoe laces. My ears are ringing! Three different children have asked me to admire their new stuffed toy at the same time and another one wants a hug.
OMG how do parents do this? All the time?
Outside four or five exhausted-looking parents are desperately trying to suck some energy out of cigarettes. Braving the blinding sunlight, the regulars have all fled out down the platform for the sake of their sanity.
At last the train comes. I herd people into the train, trying to help with prams and keeping an eye out for lost property. The platform clears, I give the driver the sign that there’s no more. He closes the doors. As the train pulls out, another tired family straggles into the station. While telling them they’ve got 20 minutes till the next train, and listening to their moans of dismay, I grab brush and shovel, sweep away the melted icy poles, chips and squashed strawberries and get ready to do it all again.
Its school holidays at Zoo Station so it will be like this for the next 6 weeks. At least the days pass quickly. Roll on the 6.00 gin and tonic!
I haven’t seen my homeless friends M and C for a while but, fingers crossed, this is a good thing. A couple of months ago they dropped by the station and told me that after five years on the housing list living in boarding houses and sleeping rough, they’d been placed in social housing. They both hope they’ll be able to get some of their children back. Terrific news! A happy ending at last!
M said – Now I’ll be able to make a cup of tea in my underpants and never have to beg again!
Then he gave me a cheeky grin and asked me for 20 dollars so that they could spend their last homeless night in a motel. I passed the money over feeling foolish but as the weeks roll by and I no longer see them begging at their old haunts, I feel more and more that it was money well spent. So relieved.
Merry Christmas everybody! And may all your homes be warm and cozy or cool and comfy depending on your hemisphere!
School’s out – at least for the final year students and it sure shows.
This week, the train driver and I suspected there were kids riding on the rear coupling of the 12.04. A sticking out leg is kind of a giveaway. When a driver looks in his rear view mirror the train behind should look smooooth.
“For those riding on the back I’m calling the police,” the driver said over the intercom.
I don’t know how they heard him, but the kids jumped off the back. Then rear carriage doors opened and two more kids popped out followed by another and another and another. In the end there must have been a dozen on the platform.
I was thinking about locking myself in the office. 12 teenagers is too much even for a big bold station host like me. But they all jumped over the fence at the other end. I could hear them laughing as they ran away through the park. No doubt it was all about the narrow escape they’d had. I suspect their interpretation of a narrow escape is different from mine.
O.K. It’s time for some relief from things we cannot change (so that we can marshal our strength for the things we can.)
Time for another Station Story
My gloomy morning was vastly improved by scaring teenage train-surfers.
Here’s how it went.
The driver of the 11.37 down train got off and walked down the train to check the back for the kids he saw hopping on the back. There were no kids there anymore, but they had graffitied all over the window of the rear driver’s cabin which meant the train was no longer safe to drive back to the city once it had reached its destination. This is a major reason why your trains are cancelled, people!
I’ve started checking the back of all the trains now and with the next down train I hit pay dirt.
As I was checking the rear coupling some boys got off the final carriage. The head of one of them appeared around the end of the train. He saw me on the opposite platform and waved sheepishly. Suspicious. There were four of them all around 13/14, clearly too young to know how to look innocent.
The train sat and sat in the platform. 3 minutes, 5 minutes.
I thought there must be some serious emergency so I went over to the opposite platform to see if the driver needed help.
The boys were milling round on platform 2.
“Why isn’t the train moving, Miss?” (I love how cheeky boys manage to make Miss sound like an insult).
The cheekiest said “Can I have your beanie, Miss?”
“I’m just going to check what’s wrong,” I told them though I had already had an idea what was going on.
On seeing me the driver came down the platform. “I’ve called the cops” he said, loud enough for the boys to hear. “We’re just waiting for them to come.””
Wow the speed with which those boys took off! Impressive. They ran and ran and didn’t stop running till they reached the other side of the second oval. No more riding down the line graffiting the back of trains for them that day.
I should have done a high five with the driver. Result!
The 3.04 stopped and the driver got out and took a walk down the platform.“I think there’s kids riding on the rear coupling,” he said as he went past. Sure enough as he got further down the train, three youths jumped off the end of the train. Giggling they leapt off the furthest end of the platform and ran into the bushes beyond.
The driver came back and the train left.
A couple of minutes later I heard yelling from the nearby tram stop. Two youths were hanging onto the back of a departing tram while a third ran alongside trying to get onto the running board. How on earth did these guys survive? But they must have because no ambulance came. They also showed an impressive turn of speed in running that kilometer between the far end of our platform and the tram stop.
I’ve started checking the back of all the trains more assiduously because kids ride on the couplings regularly (a couple of times a month I see them) I recently caught one trying to get on a coupling on the opposite platform and was able to drive him off with a shout and a glare. (he was clearly too young to ignore me, about 15)
Once a group of them inside the rear carriage saw me checking and started waving and blowing me kisses. Hard not to be softened by their cheekiness.
I understand the appeal of riding on the rear coupling, I really do, but if you fall off it’s a long way down and fast and the trains have to stop while some poor para-medic scrapes you off the tracks.
Back at work after a holiday. Blah!
But we amuse ourselves as best we can. Yesterday I got talking to one of the regulars, a highly tattooed man with a false leg who attends the nearby physio classes.
He wears tattoo sleeves on his artificial leg so that it matches his real one and I must say it’s a good way of disguising it. Also I find people with only one leg tattooed always look as if they are limping.
While he was telling me you had to be tough to get tatts, a woman on the other side of the waiting room pipped up and said it didn’t hurt all that much. Soon she was telling us how she drew a tatt in texta on her ankle back in the 70’s (“when women didn’t get tatts”) for two weeks just to try it out and see if she could handle the attention. Apparently she could, because she had lots now. The two of them got talking and when the train came they got on together still talking. Have I created a relationship here? Maybe started a true love? Probably not. But it’s nice to dream.