Balls

Six men in Italian football shirts are playing keepy-ups in a narrow alley. The one with big curly hair loses control and the ball rattles against the metal chairs outside the cafe.

A woman crosses the road without looking. In her left hand she carries a cardboard cup full of steaming coffee, and in her right she holds a pastry. She wears a shawl that totally covers her shoulders. She has a fake third arm in a green plastercast slung around her neck.

I pass two builders on the Darlinghurst Road, their workboots white with plaster. The one with dark eyes has a dense beard, but it will never be thick enough to fully disguise the Nazi 'SS' tattoo on his neck.

Sitting in a doorway outside Kings Cross station, an old man with an immaculate dinner jacket sucks on a roll-up, one leg bent, the other spilling onto the pavement. His hair is thin, and white, and gelled up in the manner of Frank Sinatra.

In a successful effort to save money I have done virtually nothing in the last three days but read and write and drink gallons of free coffee. I've only managed about thirty pages of 'Underworld' but all of 'Kiss The Girls', ''48', 'With No One As Witness' and 200 pages of Jasper Fforde's 'The Fourth Bear' which I bought about three hours ago. I have also bought some brightly coloured juggling balls for $5.50. There has been a lot of thunder and a little rain and I turned Amon Tobin up very very very loud. Rhino Jockey!



Sydney sunset...

PS. A moment of peculiar conversation: I was just about to go up the stairs to the roof terrace with a cup of tea when I was accosted by the elderly housekeeper. She looks fierce. "In my country," she says sternly, "you cannot do this. You get shot." She puts a finger to her head in the style of Travis Bickle and flexes her thumb several times. I am a little startled by this change in her behaviour. Any contact with her prior to this moment was limited to smiles and friendly "Good mornings". What have I done wrong? How have I upset her? What would get me shot? Not the cup of tea, surely... I've already drunk a dozen cups on the roof. She gestures angrily at my pocket. My iPod? Holy shit! She must know about the Bon Jovi! Who told her? How did she find out?! Then I realise she is pointing at my shorts, those scabby camouflage cut-offs I wear nonstop between June and October. "They take you from the road, they take you into the jungle, and-" the ominous thumb flexes again in slow motion, a vigilante hammer crashing down upon the puny scales of justice. She stares at me, the hoover pack strapped to her back, electrical cable trailing down the hall, a domestic Ghostbuster.

I nod politely. I've been nodding politely for a minute now, edging for the stairs. What's gone wrong? Nodding politely has always worked for me in the past. Why won't she let me be?

It turns out she's from Ecuador.