Trees, Christmas, and Satan

Lunchtime Madness

At 1:35 pm on the steps of the Post Office entrance at King William Street in Adelaide, two young teenage boys sat drinking their stubby Coke bottles with earphones in their ears, with their bikes blocking the way, and with obscenities issuing from their lips. Nearby at the balcony of the Ambassadors Hotel, a fat lady wearing a green shirt sat with her friend eating lunch, while the crowd passed by below them. In front of No. 97, the BankSA head office, two African men stood chatting: one wearing green military fatigue shirt and pants, a blue baseball cap, and sandals; the other wearing an oversized white-cum-blue-cum-orange baseball tee shirt and black and blue loose pants and dirty rubber shoes. I was looking for evidence of Christmas activity but this end of King William Street not far from Victoria Square was not showing much.

Further up at Rundle Mall, there were many signs of activity. The row of young trees lining Rundle Mall were no more than 20 feet tall. These trees couldn't be more that ten years old. But there was a large lunch time crowd: shoppers hunting for bargains, young ones in strollers being pushed by mothers eyeing the discount posters with plastic bags hanging on the strollers, elderly patrons sitting on the benches to rest their shopping-weary feet, some munching their take-away lunches. Under a marquee, a sporty figure of a large kangaroo on a racing bike was balanced on top of a racing car. Two female models in orange miniskirts distributed pamphlets. On their dresses were emblazoned in large letters stretching up at an angle: FEEL THE RUSH. They were flogging Jacob's Creek sponsored "Tour Down Under", a world cycling event happening on the South Australian roads from 17 to 22 January. This would be like Australia's version of Tour de France. Not far away, a South American man in white pants and white shirt with stringed neck played his wooden flute to some recorded background music while he danced. I knew that tune but for the life of me couldn't put a name to it. Close by, in front of the flower shop, an elderly woman with a red shirt and beige pants sat on the bench feeding the hungry pigeons with pommes frites as a young man on the same bench looked on, with his black Madventure tee shirt, black 3/4 pants, and a white baseball cap twisted around. The Sanity shop was plastered with SALE posters all over. Rundle Mall looked more like Sydney's Pitt Street Mall at lunch time.

I turned back after deciding to find the ANZ bank somewhere else. The South American man was now playing the tune of Guantanamera. One of the Jacob's creek models opened the boot of their car revealing boxes and some more legs. A boy was sleeping on his stroller while his mother pushes her way up on the other direction. A depressed-looking man in a black shirt was offering me a copy of the Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people. In front of Radio Rentals were life-size green bronze statues of pigs: one with the forelegs atop a rubbish bin, another on its four legs, and another with his bum seated on the floor, snout up on the air. A little boy was riding one of the pigs.

I crossed King William Street to Hindley Street, the western counterpart of Rundle Mall. There I went to Subway and ordered a foot-long parmesan oregano with Roasted Chicken and all the salad in Chipotle and Honey Mustard sauces. I asked for Horseradish sauce but they didn't have them anymore. Maybe it wasn't so popular they have dumped it. Just like what they did for my favourite sauce: American Mustard. I seated myself alfresco (im Freien, as they'd say in Deutsch). There was a bike there parked upside down. The owner took it away a few minutes after I started munching my lunch on a table marked "For Subway patrons only." On the other table before me, three young men chatted while lunching. A girl stopped by and kissed one of the men. She was going to Sydney for two weeks. She said she was leaving on the 11th of December, then corrected herself: 11th of January. A couple of minutes later, the girl left, saying goodbye to her friends. Meanwhile a man fronted a square rubbish bin. He was wearing a yellow cap and a sweater. He fished out a mineral water bottle from the bottom of the bin, squeezed out the remaining water, put it on the ground and crushed the plastic bottle, and put it in a shopping trolley and pushed away. A few minutes later, the three young men left, with a plastic bottle left on their table. A man in white singlet and black shorts whizzed past and grabbed the bottle, emptied it clean, and crushed it, and sped off with his bag.

Finishing lunch, I turned my way back to the corner of Hindley Street and King William. There a young lady approached the passers-by with a folder in her hand, an ID hanging on her neck. She belonged to the Wilderness Society, the largest environmental organisation in Australia and the most successful. They were looking for members to support their cause. She was on break from her university. She talked about the Tarkine region in north-west Tasmania. Some of the trees were 400 to 600 year old eucalypts. They wanted the area to be protected and not turned to plantation, which would involve logging and burning up the area. She showed some pictures of some of the huge trees that have been cut down. "Would you like to be a member?" she asked.

I replied, "I don't want to be a member. But I'm interested in what you people do. I'm interested in many things."

"What things are you interested in?" she asked inquisitively.

"I'm interested in what people believed in strongly, in what they're passionate about. Are you passionate about this?" I asked.

She answered, "Yes."

I asked again, "Would you kill for it?"

"No, I wouldn't necessarily kill for it," she declared.

I walked away after the usual parting gestures. I was writing down notes while crossing to the other side to Pirie Street, avoiding bumping into people.

Not about birds and bees

Later in the afternoon, I went to the tram stop at Victoria Square. A bearded man was talking to an African woman and her little girl. He had long curly white hair, a white beard; he would make an excellent Santa Claus personality without the paunch. He wore a dirty blue checkered long-sleeved shirt and faded dungarees. He smelled of sweat and tobacco. I caught him saying something about Iraq and how the third world war would be started from there. I said that it was predicted in the Bible that the war would come from the north of Israel, which would make that true. He went on to talk about the future, as portrayed by Star Trek and Deep Space Nine. That's our future, he said. He said he was born in Adelaide, that he was Catholic but not practising anymore. He said he believed in the Liberal party, that the current Labor government of South Australia are a bunch of shitheads. "They should take the idols out of the church," he said.

"Catholics don't worship idols; the statues are just like the pictures of your family," I said but didn't really want to discuss apologetics. He said he had seen Satan, that he was in human form. He then mentioned something about fellatio which I didn't catch at first but he spelled the word out.

I didn't quite make out what he was actually saying but my fuzzy logic made me think to myself, "What? Did Satan offer you fellatio and you declined?".

"Satan appeared in human form," he repeated. Then he mentioned about vampires. "There are vampires around," he declared.

"How do you know there are vampires?"I asked.

"I wouldn't know," he replied. "I could be a vampire. You could be a vampire. There's no way that you could prove to me that you're not a vampire." I wasn't sure if that made sense and somehow that made me a bit uneasy.

We boarded the Glenelg Tram. Later on the bearded man chatted some more with the African kid. The kid's in year 1. They came from Sudan and have been in Australia for nine months.

The tram stopped for a few minutes at stop 16, Plymton Park. People were getting impatient. A tall man seated in front of me opened the window to get some fresh air. "Waz goin' awn?", a impatient man in a tank top asked the conductor who explained something about waiting for the other tram coming from the other direction. I didn't think that Adelaidians spoke with a drawl but this one did. The tank top man jumped out of the tram for fresh air, followed by the man who had seen Satan who quickly took out and puffed a cigarette while waiting for the tram to roll on forward to Glenelg.

28 December 2005