crawl of... death

So I have to get to Park Orchards by 10.30 on a Thursday morning. A little time spent on the Metlink website has me sorted on a Broadmeadows train at 8.34 and in PO at 10.14 or thereabouts, luverly jubbly. Well, of course I arrive at Broady station and to my enormous surprise the train is 20 minutes late. This means naturally I get to the city three minutes after I am supposed to take a 307 bus to the Donvale terminus. At this time I always enjoy calling the hapless call centre workers and putting in a complaint, and they have perfected a brilliant synthesis of politeness and complete lack of interest that I suppose deflects people from thinking that they are dealing with someone who might want to defend the lateness of trains. (The bus, by the way, was 9 minutes late getting to the appropriate spot for me to connect with the 271 Ringwood bus which was due 6 minutes after the 307. However, the 271 was fortuitously 3 minutes late. It’s like cliché of a primary school maths problem isn’t it. Once getting on the 271 I gave John 3 apples who gave Jill half the number of apples Peter gave Redmond, who had twice as many apples as me).

I read The Age every day and I appreciate the universe it creates, a pleasant fantasy based on elements of fact though, unlike for instance the film Fargo, not universal truths. Yesterday I enjoyed seeing the Age grapple with why people might perhaps want to live somewhere more than 3 km beyond the CBD. The good reason they never seem to have tried on for size is that many suburbs offer triple the variety interest and versatility than any number of elegant Fitzroy ruined terrace houses, but that’s not important right now. Yesterday it was so someone could buy a block of land – any land please god even if it’s in (shudder) Epping – to reunite their family, and family is something the Age understands has relevance to the ethnics. Similarly the Age’s obsession with public transport is both intriguing and misses a basic underlying fact. This is that the state government whoever they may be can get away with underfunding public transport because only a small percentage of Melbournians use it (and many of those are too young to vote and probably equate reaching adulthood with the ‘freedom’ of learning to drive). Yes, it is a catch 22, because the more PT is funded the better it will be and the more people want to use it, but at the same time, the more possibility there is for people to feel disgruntledly in the thrall of a government (or semi-government) service.

For some reason people can disconnect from the idea that roads are not also every bit as much a feature of planning and governance. I remember the argument I had with some dumbass students I had to cope with five or so years ago re: road tolls and train tickets, where they didn’t think they should have to pay road tolls and I said well why is using a road different from using a railway and they said (sort of unanimously, or at least a couple said it and others agreed), ‘well we don’t buy tickets’.

On the bus I entertained once again my irritating ability to recognize one of probably thousands of irritating pop songs I sincerely dislike, from a few squeaky bars above engine noise. It was Dire Straits’ ‘Walk of Life’. I mean for all I know that chronically horrible keyboard line is completely calculated to be audible above every other ghastly noise of daily life (as it was lived almost 30 years ago). I hate that song very much thank you. The radio also played some things I like though like ‘Summer in the City’ and ‘Get it On’. I suppose I say these are things I like but in truth I would not voluntarily play them for my pleasure. I just hate them about 30 000% less than ‘Walk of Life’, which should not even have been allowed to be a song. That song was like a direct by-product of a Thatcher government, and not in a good way like songs by The Specials or whatever, but in a way that it was like Thatcher policies created the diseased environment in which such a travesty could flourish. I don’t have a clue what that song is about (Chuck Berry? That’d be right)* but it should have died on the first night of its existence. Instead it is still being played, its cheesy topping piping like a wheezy phlegm tweet above the sound of a bus engine and passing cars on Hoddle Street. I want to smack not only Mark Knopfler but everyone who bought that song and who responded favourably to its inclusion on a hypothetical playlist in consumer polling. That would take the rest of my entire lifetime I suppose – it no doubt sold millions and not only would it take hundreds of people hundreds of years to find out who bought it, but also getting them lined up. Some of them are probably now dead and I would like to think there could be a special exemption for dead ones but maybe there isn’t. It would probably be easier to just smack everyone born between 1940 and 2000, as I am pretty sure no-one under 10 would have bought ‘Walk of Life’, and you’d be going pretty well on getting the largest possible section of those who did just concentrating on the 11-70 year olds.

The downside is it’s not fair that so many people who didn’t buy or otherwise support ‘Walk of Life’ are getting the punishment. But as far as I’m concerned that’s part of living in a society. So much of one’s life is dominated by other people’s bullshit. I mean why am I always singled out for explosives testing whenever I come through the airport? I’ll tell you: it’s because I look white and educated (and the truth is, I’m both) and am unlikely to kick up a stink. If there is actually a system that makes my selection genuinely random, then I should buy more lottery tickets, because random is less random than I realized. Anyway. The real reason I have to so often suffer the boredom and indeed it’s probably even humiliation of being checked for explosives every time I get on a plane is that other people are jerks. It’s no different to being slapped because other people bought ‘Walk of Life’. I know I’ve put it in your head now, sorry, but I didn’t create or support it in any way. It disgusts me.

* Later, I wikipediaed it and it's about street musicians. I guess as they were its inspiration MK put all the royalties from the song into small coins in a huge tank and went around shooting 20p a piece at street musicians. No, seriously, he does a lot for charity.