Saturday. The city's public transport system shuts down to thwart lockdown protestors. Earlier in the week the drawbridge comes up on Ballarat, population 100,000, when a covid-19 case is detected. Maybe two. Maybe four. The Australian Capital Territory, where Autralia's bureaucracy lives, is given a further four weeks detention (prefixed - as always - 'at least') in the face of a few dozen infections. Back to Melbourne: photographs of several ultra-orthodox residents of the Balaclava/East St Klda area are repeatedy - meaning across many days - published in newspapers and social media following reports of 'illegal' religious meetings. When the truly insane ban on children playing in playgrounds is reversed the obeisant press prints pictures of smiling adults and children jumping for joy at playgrounds - as if gifted with a privilege - instead of being white-hot angry at the sheer stupidity, cruelty and utter pointlessness of the ban. Today: s man flies into Dar
That lazy afternoon, with Blue Juice dying on the radio towards one o'clock, the kitchen table had Sunday written all over it. The wreckage of someone's - or several persons' - late breakfast of maple-syruped pancakes lay almost buried under the outspread weekend newspapers. Yes, newspapers plural. At least three weekend newspapers find their way into this house. The death of the newspaper will not be on my head. I cleaned the table. I like cleaning it. It is a mid-twentieth century original, of smoke-patterned pale green chrome-edged Laminex, over a tubular stainless steel frame that cleverly curves down at each corner into twin chrome legs that stand on the polished timber floor in neat black rubber stoppers, like little socks. It is as quintessentially 1950s as an R-Type Bentley. (And as long-lasting. Every year I see Ikea tables thrown in disgust onto hard rubbish collections, pathetic legs snapped like twigs, and deep scratches in their faux-timber veneers.) I had pre