More Urban Life

          Three Walking Women at the Park

Except in high summer,

when we leave about six a.m.

to avoid the vicious sunshine,

my dog and I leave the house about nine

to avoid drive-time traffic

on our way to Day’s Park

for our morning exercise.

The park’s nine-to-ten population

includes many regulars, of course.

The oddest regulars, to my mind,

are the three walking women.

They don’t have a dog, for one thing.

One is what used to be called

Of A Certain Age,

and the other two seem to be in their twenties.

The older woman and the elder of the other two

have a decided family resemblance,

With round, reddish faces and statuesque figures,

flaunted with short shorts except on the coldest days.

The youngest one is short and dark and slender

and usually wears similarly slender, dark, midcalf-length trousers.

but the two older walking women

make an effort to avoid eye contact with me,

although once a few years ago they commented

on my downsizing after I’d downsized,

and they were stuck one morning when I passed by

and they were in conversation with

one of my dog-owner mates.

I seem to make them nervous for some reason.

They’re clearly affluent

and the younger two clearly don’t go to school.

Sometimes I wonder if the older one

is a high-class madam

for her girls,

or if they tie macramé pothangers

all day long.

                          Broken Beer

Although they make sense and are Good Things,

re-usable grocery bags do have one major drawback.

As is also the case with marriages, dogs, bottles of beer,

and pretty much everything else, including myself,

they don’t last forever.

So when the seam gave way just a bit

at the bottom of my super-duper,

four-separate-sleeves-for-wine-bottles

imitation-cloth re-usable grocery bag,

a 568 ml bottle of Mac’s Hop Rocker slipped through the hole

and smashed foamingly on the kerb of the Whitiora Bridge footpath.

Since it makes no sense to cry over spilt beer,

I shrugged inwardly, sublabialised a, ‘Well, that’s that,’

and continued on for the remaining fifteen-minute walk home.

A pity, to be sure.

I didn’t rue the $3.85 the bottle had cost, no point in that,

but I did feel sad that I had no beer to drink,

and I felt bad leaving all that broken glass just lying there,

but the situation had not been one to allow me,

reasonably,

to pick it up and dispose of it responsibly.

I was keeping my shopping bag close to the ground

in case anything else fell out

(nothing did),

and about five minutes after the mishap

an attractive woman of a Certain Age walking in the other direction

took her earbuds out, gestured toward my awkward posture, smiled,

and advised me to get a backpack,

as they make carrying heavy loads easier.

I responded by flexing the bicep of my free arm

and saying in a fake Russian accent,

‘Is strong. Is good.’

                         Goldstar Bakery

I used to go to the hot bread shop in Fairfield,

a bit closer to where I live,

but even though it’s a bit more expensive,

and I was more than a bit more poor,

I switched my allegiance

to the Goldstar Bakery

at Five Crossroads.

The sandwiches are bigger

and more to my liking,

and go to their twofer price

two hours earlier.

The plain buns and the French sticks

are bigger for the same price,

and their crusts are much more to my taste.

They set out the cut-price day-old tray

early in the day,

and when I’m feeling recklessly naughty

their hot dogs wrapped in pastry with melted cheese on top

just ring my bell, even when a day old,

although I always pay a silent tribute

to the suffering of the swine

before wrapping my laughing gear around them,

rationalising to myself that the amount of economic demand

that two hot dogs from a day-old tray

adds to the cruelty of New Zealand’s swine-meat industry

is negligible.

The best part of the Goldstar Bakery, though,

is the people who run it,

who are always helpful, cheerful,

and apparently genuinely friendly,

unlike those at some of their competitors’ shops.

This has been an unsolicited, unpaid endorsement.

           Dead Duck

After another

surrender to insomnia

I was driving my dog

to Day’s Park before dawn.

I took the left hairpin

from River Road to the drive

that goes downhill to the carpark

in third gear in the dark,

then shifted into neutral

to glide down the slope saving fuel

when a fat female duck

waddled into the headlights

just a metre or two in front of me.

I was slow to react

and went over the top.

I went on down and parked

without going back up to assess the carnage.

Now I like duck much more than I like ducks,

especially when it’s crispy or in a Thai curry,

although I’m not keen

on the greasy, on-the-bone, Hong-Kong-barbecue style.

I should have claimed my road kill

and then googled up a recipe when I got home,

because it’s wrong for people

to kill what we don’t eat,

but I told myself

that I don’t have the skill

and I didn’t have the time

to pluck and prepare it,

even though a weaver friend

would’ve loved to have had the feathers,

so I just left it there.

I tried not to look

when I left the park,

feeling sad and disgusted

at myself.

                  Yee-Hah!, Fairfield Style

Right after I’d eased myself out of the car

I saw two pitbulls

running at full tilt,

one right down the middle of Holland Road,

the other down the footpath

by my car.

It was only unsettling

for a flash.

They had no interest in me.

A small car

driven by a large man

appeared from up by Peachgrove,

rolling slowly, chasing them,

the man, head sticking out the window,

yelling at them incoherently.

My mind went back

to the cattle-drive cowboy movies

I’d seen when I’d been small.

       December Sock Adventure

I saw a hole in my sock

that was too big to ignore

one morning on a day

when I received my pension payment,

so I drove to the Chartwell Square mall,

which is the only place I know around here

where I can buy durable socks.

I’d neglected, however, to bear in mind

that it was the first week of December.

After finally finding a place to park

and actually entering the mall

I of course found myself assaulted

by cheesy Xmas bullshit from every direction.

A stumpy little dude in Santa Claus drag

even had the effrontery

to hit my grumpy-looking scrooge face

with a “Mehhh-ree Christmas!”

as we passed each other in the upstairs mall,

I suppose during his break

from cultivating consumerist acquisitiveness

in affluent suburban children.

I responded archly,

“Ho. Ho. Bloody ho,”

but at least I had new socks in my bag.

                         Holiday Cheer

Sunday morning

after New Year’s

morning walk

first to the child cancer clothing drop-off bin

with a pair of holy socks,

that I have since learnt they don’t want,

then through the Farmer’s Market

in the Sonning Carpark on River Road,

depopulated due to the summer holiday,

but still priced beyond my means.

Over the bridge and into the CBD,

where more homeless people than usual

were highly visible,

congregating on bus-stop benches;

panhandlers,

many more than usual,

one a pretty young woman

barely past adolescence, or still in it

(what horrors drove her from home?),

all asking for ‘a spare two dollars’.

I wished that I had

a pocket full of fives

to give away,

but I wasn’t making ends meet myself.

Computer problems.

        Virgin Inner Link Experience

Rin and Abbie said to take the Inner Link,

the green bus.

Mel at Marbecks

said I could catch it right out the back door,

so I did.

It was waitin there for me.

The one that was there

was going in the wrong direction,

but that was okay,

because I had time to kill,

and my old-fart’s card

let me ride for free.

I sat at the back,

where the seats are up high.

Going the wrong way

gave me a fine slow tour

of Auckland’s inner perimeter,

which pleased my eyes

and my imagination

at no cost.

The views of hills and gullies

and jagged horizon lines

and unique streetscapes

changed constantly.

The automated videos

telling the upcoming stops

delighted my hayseed consciousness.

The driver, of course,

was a scowling grouch.

Most of the passengers

called out ‘thank you’ to him

before stepping off,

but it just made him

scowl even more.

                         Polite Robots

The robots that scan the barcodes

on the stuff I buy

and take my money

at the supermarket self-checkout

have a particularly annoying and insistent recorded voice

that says the same thing every time

and repeats itself if a customer doesn’t move fast enough,

such as by taking the time

to put the eftpos card back into my wallet after swiping it.

Nagging bitch.

Fortunately, somebody showed me how to turn the voice off,

so now the only thing I have to hear it say,

after I take the last of my purchases

off of its sensitive little scale

is, ‘Thank you for using the fast lane.’

Such a polite robot.

I always answer, ‘You’re welcome,’

and sometimes think that The Polite Robots

would be a good name for a band.

              Claudelands Park Incident

Three teenagers were acting silly in the park,

following an ancient script:

a boy showing off for two girls.

The boy was tall, active, and radiated physicality;

The girls, unusual amongst the local Somalis,

were wearing long black niqabs.

As I walked by with my miniature schnauzer

the girls made a big fuss,

squealing and jumping back in fake fear.

Wearing a white cloth wrapped around his head

that made him look even bigger than he was,

the bloke, tall and imposing and almost smelling of testosterone,

advanced on me, swaggering with confident charm, oodles of it.

He reached into the pocket of his hoodie

and pulled out a package of what looked like shortbread biscuits

and asked with, again unlike most young Somali-Kiwis,

a thick East African accent if my dog would like a ‘biss-koo-eet’.

I checked that they weren’t chocolate and said, ‘Sure’.

The Little Fella okayed it, too.

Then the young blade boogied off to impress the two teen niqabs

with his courage with dogs, woofing at them,

and they screamed and giggled and lifted their niqabs’ hems

as he danced about them with more joy than artistic merit.

A couple of days later I saw him again,

from a hundred metres or so across the park.

He waved to me with both hands over his head,

then turned his attention to a seemingly playful girl

– just one this time – in a colourful hijab outfit.

I imagined that he was glad to be in Hamilton,

rather than Mogadishu.

     Unspecified Imaginary Fart Offence

Exercising my quadrupedal flatmate

along Claudelands Park’s southern footpath,

I observed a copmobile as it eased to a stop

in the carpark by the playground –

although not in any designated parking space.

A uniformed guardian of the public peace

climbed out and headed for the public toilets

at the side of the Grandstand Function Centre

to exercise, I suppose, his kidney-and-bladder functions.

Being in that sort of a mood,

I caught his eye and threw up my hands.

‘I confess, Constable!’ I shouted out.

He whipped his neck around to pierce me with his eyes,

uncertain and uneasy about the situation.

I pointed toward my adopted old schnauzer and shouted,

‘He did it!’

He shook his head and smiled sadly.

‘They always blame the dog,’ he said,

before turning back toward the loo to do his duty.