Two Old Men

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An old man enters my carriage and after fiddling with his belt he sits down. He has a couple of exercise books in his hand and I wonder if he is a writer like me who finds it useful to make notes as a way of enhancing his observational powers. He now begins to worry the contents of his shirt pocket, which consists of a couple of pens and scraps of notepaper. He removes the pieces of paper and is studying them intently with a puzzled look on his face. Perhaps they are extensions of his memory that he needs to consult over and over.

At Newmarket a pretty girl gets on board wearing piercings in her nose and eyebrows and makeup that evokes the look of a vampire. Her hair is the colour of soot and is sticking up in tufts on the top of her head like grass growing in a pot. Her midriff is bare as if she enjoyed a sudden growth spurt and outgrew her clothes.

The old man who was quite oblivious to the girl is now busy tearing up his notebooks, systematically and neatly, first folding the pages and then tearing them into strips. He is quite intent in this task and the expression of his face suggests that it is absorbing and deeply satisfying. Indeed, at Bowen Hills, when the girl passes him to exit the carriage his eyes remain focussed on the job at hand.

At Central I leave both the train and the old man who has by now a neat pile of torn paper neatly laid along side him. I felt a certain fellow feeling with the old guy. Both of us waste time and note paper even though in different ways.

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