Lone Explorers

It’s the Chinese New Year and the Chinese community here in Sydney have been putting on a show downtown. Our plans were to go down to Belmore Park to join in the celebrations, but that was before England beat Australia on Friday night and we realised that the second match in the finals series was being held at the SCG today.

Of course, strictly speaking, it was my turn to go to the cricket (by quite a long way – I haven’t been to a cricket match since we saw the day/night match at the SCG on my 30th birthday in 2002 and missed the entire ashes series at home in 2005 through being too pregnant), but I knew Darren would really love to go along today, so I encouraged him to see if he could get a ticket, which left me holding the baby (again).

Not to be deterred, Ella and I made an executive decision that we would go to the Chinese celebrations on our own. Ella has been having some trouble with her daytime naps again, so it was 3.20pm when we finally set off into the city, at which point the heavens opened and I remembered I had neither a coat nor an umbrella in the car. The weather was coming in from the Pacific so I drove down to Coogee to assess the situation out at sea, which didn’t look great, but if there’s one thing I’m learning from this whole experience, it’s not to worry or plan too much (because everything will turn out differently anyway), so we carried on regardless.

The rain was welcome, but not to the hoards of surfies abandoning the sands at Coogee draped in beach towels. The weather has been so hot that the rain hitting the road caused a layer of steam to settle on the tarmac. The tyres didn’t like the conditions either; I skidded a couple of times on the way to Bondi, where we left the car and headed for the train station into the city.

It was the first time I’ve ever used an underground system with a pushchair and I now pity those who have to do so on a frequent basis. For a start, it’s really hot and sticky below ground level (and it smells like Asia – don’t ask me to describe what Asia smells like, it just has a particular smell which I really like), and secondly, finding lifts and having to wait for them is tedious beyond belief. At Bondi, I ran like hell for a train standing at platform 2, which was a serious blow to my street cred (if I had any) because Bondi Junction is the end of the line. So having made the mad dash to board, I then sat for ten long minutes waiting for the train to depart, which was made even less bearable by sharing a carriage with a group of adolescents engaged in high jinx like nicking each other’s eskies (cool boxes) and jumping off the train (until the police got on and sorted them out).

At Central station I shared a lift with a man with cerebral palsy. He was navigating his way between stations and complained loudly that the train guard had failed to understand his request for assistance with alighting at Central and turfed him off at Town Hall. His speech was quite difficult to understand unless you watched his face closely. I understood everything he said, but it must be immensely frustrating when others don’t take the time to listen. I didn’t know my way out to street level, so he escorted me, which was kind of him, but his wheelchair was like the proverbial off a shovel and I had to virtually jog to keep up with him. I think he was taking the micky, which was amusing. He sped off round the corner with a wicked look on his face after he’d showed me to the exit.

The celebrations at Belmore Park were a bit of a letdown, which was a pity because the entire journey had taken me 70 minutes from leaving the house (I hadn’t wanted to cross the city in the car because of the cricket traffic). The main attraction was a large old Chinese lady warbling on a stage in the manner of Marguerita Pracatan (if you ever watched the Clive James Show, you’ll get the reference). Even the local Chinese looked non-plussed. More pressingly, there was no char-sui pork at all, though Ella got two ice creams (having dropped the first face-down for a mud topping). We headed back for the station with Ella covered in ice-cream, the cornet and I melting at a similar rate.

Ella was on her best charm offensive with our fellow passengers during the ride back to Bondi, which started with shouting “hello lady” and “I got ice gream, I dropped it!” and progressed to standing up in the pushchair bellowing “I done a poo” down the carriage, which was a ploy to be allowed to get out. She had not done a poo, I checked twice, but this didn’t stop her insisting “I got stinky bottom” very loudly. I tried to catch the eye of the other people in the carriage to give one of those sardonic, ironic type looks, but I couldn’t seem to press the right buttons for the Aussie humour and was met with “bad mummy” looks, even when I asserted that she was just trying it on. Only the lady next to us smiled. She asked Ella’s age and was astounded that she’s only nineteen months. She looks and acts older. “Yes”, I replied as Ella counted accurately to fifteen, “I don’t know where we got her from, but she’s driving us mental”. She understood exactly what I meant when Ella fixed her with her new “defiant” facial expression and said “Ella want peaches”. It’s been a long day.