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The white coping on the edge of the platform is no place for a blue tongue lizard or for the excited children dancing around it.  The poor creature keeps swerving to peer over the edge of the platform clearly looking for a hidey hole or just an escape from the kids. But there’s nothing out there but a one and half metre drop and no purchase for lizard claws.  I grab my long-handled brush and shovel and go to scoop it up.  It bites at the brush and then it crouches down and makes itself as wide and flat as it can so that it looks like its swallowed a saucer.  “I’m too big to eat,” it’s saying. Finally it decides the shovel is a hidey hole and darts inside.

Result!

I lower the shovel down over the edge of the platform and before I’ve reached the ground the lizard jumps out and skitters into the safe shadows.

Every Autumn these large puffball fungi break through the asphalt.  And always I am reminded of this poem by Sylvia Plath.

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

“I found these people wandering around outside the zoo,” said the young man.  “I think they want a train I hope you can help them.  They only speak Russian.”

And so saying, he left.

The old man with the walking stick and the old woman in the beanie agreed that they were Russki but that was the end of our communication.  I bought them over to the ticket machine, but not only could I not explain how they got a ticket,  I couldn’t even work out where they wanted to go.  The woman was getting more and more upset repeating the same phrase and urgently tapping her map of the zoo.   I didn’t want to put them on the wrong train.

Thank God for the young man seating nearby!  It turned out he had studied Russian in school. A long and complicated conversation followed obviously slowed down by his having an unexpected accent.  At last he told me that these elderly people were expecting to be picked up by a car at the Zoo Gate. But when they got out of the gate they were confused because they didn’t recognize the place.

The first young man had actually brought them further from their goal! No that he could know that.   He’d clearly meant well and the elderly woman kept tapping the picture of the railway gate on her zoo map.

As the train came and and took my Russian speaking helper away, I lead the increasingly anxious and questioning Russians back to the zoo.  The zoo gate only seemed to make them more upset. It finally occurred to me why that might be happening.

The zoo has two entrance gates, a main gate and a railway gate. Visitors often assume there is only one gate and come out the wrong one.  Could that be what happened to these two?  I applied to the railway gate staff who liked my theory.  We handed the Russians over to an zoo volunteer who would take them over to the other gate.  I don’t know what happened after that. I didn’t see them again, which I hope was a good sign. I hope an anxious waiting child was reunited with anxious elderly parents.

But what amazing luck to find someone with schoolboy Russian sitting in the Zoo station waiting room at just the right time.  Someone was watching over someone that day.

A large heavy set man is vaping in front of the station. Did you hear the one about the about the woman who bought a Koala he says suddenly to a small Asian lady wheeling a pram up the ramp. From her startled reaction she has no idea who he is.
She found it on Gumtree he continues, mystifying her even further. I go out to break the ice.
That’s a terrible pun I tell him.
I’ve got millions of them, he says. And proceeds to tell me them continuously till the train comes 10 minutes later.
The relieved pram pushing lady escapes to the platform. She’s worked out he was trying to tell her a joke but really when someone three times your size lunges at you out of the blue its understandably unnerving. Its certainly socially inept on the part of the man.
Some may see this as a sacrifice on my part, but actually I have a terrible weakness for bad puns such as Why are drivers good at driving locomatives? Becasue they’ve been trained. So I guess my laughing will do nothing to persude the man not to do it again.

A torrid hour at the junction when we have a signal failure affecting several lines.  The people on the C line are told leave Platform 2 for Platform 6 and after 15 minutes told to go to Platform 4.  3 trains worth crowd onto the 1 train.  They are understandably pissed off when they are told the train won’t be going down the C line.  I try to answer people’s questions, but I don’t know much. It’s no one’s fault.  Control are moving what trains they can when they can and it’s all very spur of the moment.  A drunk decides this is a good time to try and pick up one of my colleagues with revolting hip wiggles and leering.  We chase him off telling him we’re just too busy.

Everyone is mad.  I get in the lift and am hit by a wall of angry testosterone.  An African couple – wife in hijab and a Bogan couple are facing off in the tiny crowded space.  I’m sure the Bogan couple have said something nasty to the African couple but at this point the Bogans are the ones offended. “That’s not very nice to call us Junkies” they cry. It’s a fair complaint.  They stink of alcohol, not drugs.  It’s a long tense 30 second ride and everyone gets out of the lift as fast as they can at the top

Zoo station has a regular customer T. who shows up and threatens to jump under the trains.  He’s got an ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) and I don’t think he’s suicidal but we have to take him seriously.  Yesterday he upped the ante by covering his face with his own faeces and saying he had a knife. (he didn’t) The Control desk took that seriously and stopped me from leaving the Junction for Zoo Station.  So I got to watch the police deciding what to do with T. on CCTV.  The poor young police man who was holding T.s arm threw up twice at the smell or the idea of a face full of poo.  After a 20 minutes train stoppage it was all over and I was allowed to go down to my station.  Strange when you get there.  You wouldn’t know anything dramatic had happened except for the policeman puke on the sidewalk.  Easily fixed with hot water and disinfectant.

As for T.  he seems to have been content with stopping the trains and having the police and ambulance attend.  The police took him home. (on foot not in their car)

A class of primary school kids have a long wait at Zoo station.  A group of them discover the public telephone.  Press buttons!! A receiver on a cord!!  Public phone calls are free now so 7 of them line up and call their parents on this antique communications device.  Such excitement!

I feel old.

A few days later

Parmesan cheese attack on my local pay phone. It’s rubbed into everything and pressed into the headset. Tried to scrape it off myself but it needs a technician. The station entrance is now redolent with Parmesan. Hope the birds like it.  Odd thing is – it didn’t put off the under 12’s who had a grand time playing with it despite the smell.  Come to think of it – strange smells are part of my remembered the public phone experience too.