Urban Life

                          Christmas In May

She had her tinny little electric keyboard thingy

set up on the footpath on Victoria Street

that cool and hazy May afternoon.

I like buskers, so I thought I’d go up and listen,

maybe make a request.

I thought that for a keyboard a good request would be

‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’.

Good, old-timey stuff, y’know.

As I approached I was able to focus better through my cataracts,

and I saw that although her facial features

were regular and well-proportioned,

they were tight and pinched and serious and disapproving,

as if she were sitting in a non-dispersing cloud of a sour fart,

her beautifully strawberry-blond hair

tied back tightly in a skimpy ponytail.

She was playing a Christmas carol,

‘The first Noël’

over and over again,

in May,

her scrunched-up scowl frozen in place.

I decided against asking her to play some Jerry Lee Lewis.

When I walked by in the other direction

a half an hour or so later

she was gone.

Literally this time, rather than figuratively, as before.

                      Fairfield Shops

There they stood,

just outside the dairy

at Heaphy Terrace

and Howden Road,

both of them young women,

in their early twenties, I’d say.

One seemed to be Maori

and was wearing cut-offs and a heavy-metal t-shirt.

The other had Middle-Eastern features

and was wearing an Islamic headscarf

and multicoloured hijab clothing

that covered her from her chin to the footpath,

except for her hands.

There they stood,

eating ice cream and laughing together,

chatting the way that people

who’ve been close friends for years chat.

I felt cheated because I’ll never know their story.

                    Rangi on the Bridge

They were three abreast on the narrow footpath,

basically blocking it,

unsmooth-looking men in their late thirties,

at about the same spot where I’d come to grief

the last time I’d crossed the bridge in that direction

four-and-a-half weeks earlier.

The one on the bicycle, though,

pulled away and smiled a good-morning at me as he went by.

As I passed the other two I nodded, ‘Hey,’

and heard the shorter one say, ‘Richard.’

I turned around

and heard him say

to the medium-sized one with the round head and face,

‘Mr Selinkoff.’

Then he turned and faced me and we shook hands.

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Ummm …’

‘I’m Rangi.’

And I saw the resemblance,

despite the lines on his face and the scraggly beard,

to the skinny little kid in my third-form English class

and junior basketball team

at Otorohanga College 24 years earlier.

His nana had been my postie.

‘Damn, Rangi,’ I said, ‘you sure aren’t thirteen anymore, are you?’

He laughed and we walked off in our separate directions.

Not being 43 anymore, I couldn’t recall his surname.

  Suburban Bunny Encounter

I thought it was a cat at first

in the half-light of dawn,

but when, strolling along,

I came closer to it

I saw that it was a rabbit

there on the Winter Street footpath.

My instant response,

an urge to kill it,

surprised and shocked me,

and I suppressed it instantly.

From what primeval

part of my brain

that bunnicidal reaction emerged

I’ll never know.

Apparently unconcerned by my approach

the rabbit

turned unhurriedly

into a driveway

and hopped past the hedge

toward a house

as if it knew

where it was going.

        Recognising Achievement

He was a sullen-looking kid,

maybe eighteen or nineteen,

working behind the display chiller

in the supermarket’s seafood section.

When he saw that I was waiting for service

he just short of glowered at me

and muttered something unintelligible.

I ordered a hundred grams of marinara mix.

He grabbed a small pottle,

spooned some of the mix into it,

and weighed it: 98 grams.

‘Hey!’ I said, definitely impressed,

‘That was really skilful!’

An enormous, happy smile spread over his face.

‘Nah,’ he said, ‘it was just luck.’

We smiled at each other for another moment

and then I was off to pick up some soy milk.

                                  Good Legs

Neither one of them noticed me.

I was just a harmless old man in the background

who looked as if he’d be worthless in a dust-up,

which is what I was.

The bloke, who was in heavy-metal drag,

came up behind the young woman,

who was wearing lycra work-out shorts,

while she was pushing keys at the ATM

and said, ‘Hey sheila, you got some good legs!’

She turned around and half-smiled and said,

‘Yeah. They keep me from bouncing along the footpath on my arse

and let me reach the money machine,

which I’m trying to concentrate on without being disturbed.’

He replied, ‘Y’know, you have a really cute smile,’

and reached a hand out toward her hip.

Her right uppercut sank wrist-deep into his gut –

or that’s the way it seemed to me,

my view being partially obstructed –

and a whole lot of air oomfed rapidly out of his mouth

in the instant before her high martial-arts kick

caught him just below the ear,

making him collapse in a heap.

‘Yep, good legs, eh?’ she said. ‘You bet,’

before finishing her business and walking away.

Neither had noticed me and I hadn’t said a word.

I walked around the man, who was struggling to his knees,

and used the ATM to get the twenty dollars cash

I needed to buy a tinny.

At my advanced age I find that this is a world

that I can appreciate better

moment by moment from the perspective

of a somewhat odd angle.

                     The Hols

If you want my opinion,

and it’s unlikely that you do,

the school holidays suck.

It’s not just that I couldn’t find a car park

at Chartwell Square when I went to renew my car’s rego,

or that the municipal natatorium

(look it up)

is overcrowded,

or that the burglary rate goes through the roof –

the worst thing

is that my beloved city

becomes increasingly fraught with ugliness

as the hols drag on

and those hideously reptilian,

egomaniacally sociopathic

pubescent children,

go swaggering along the footpaths

in their tedious uniforms

with time on their hands,

and cans of spray paint under their hoodies,

and raise the level of tagging from disgusting to disheartening,

lowering my quality of life

by exposing me to huge expanses

of public, dimwitted ugliness.

I want to spray-paint their bedrooms.

                 A Vocation Discovered

After I’d crossed Heaphy Terrace with my dog,

but before we’d crossed the footpath into the park,

a young bloke, maybe twenty or so years old,

with a decidedly downmarket self-presentation,

centring on bad and missing teeth

approached us on his beat-up old bike,

slowed down, and exchanged greetings with me.

He clearly wanted to chat.

This happens from time to time,

the conversations usually ending with an appeal for funds.

This bloke was different.

He was excited and wanted to share.

He told me that what he does is take care of old people.

I replied that I thought this was cool,

being an old person myself.

He went on to regale me with an account

of an incident the previous evening

when, just after dark, he’d spotted a ‘couple of young fellas’

at the far corner of the park

mugging an old fella in a mobility scooter.

Well, actually, he didn’t really know the term ‘mobility scooter’,

but we got there.

They’d knocked the codger off his machine

by the time my raconteur arrived like the bicycle cavalry;

he’d fought them off and then helped the old guy on his way.

We continued talking, him walking his bike and adding details.

He told me not to worry;

he was going to help old people cross the park after dark

from then on.

I told him I thought that was a really nice thing.

I haven’t seen him since.