Drive-By

The rain stopped briefly on the weekend, just long enough for the cars to race. But now it's returned for the working week, purely to play havoc with my hair. The constant drizzle has the effect of making the top section plaster to my skull, and the bottom flick out like Carol Brady. No amount of brushing or swearing seems to fix it.

By 4PM it's almost dark, with just enough light to see the cars whizzing down Northbourne. The road is streaked and glossy like icing on a cake. Good enough to eat for some - I just saw a yellow Gemini go by, it was flying well over the speed limit when the passenger door opened suddenly. A girl leaned out over the edge, laughing and yelling, swaying dangerously close to the road, before someone inside the car pulled her back in.

Another guy just broke down in an old Fairlane. He managed to get the car up onto the island strip, beneath a sagging gum tree. He banged his head on the steering wheel a half dozen times, then got out, slamming the door behind him. He's about 5 feet nothing and a built like a marshmallow so his body wobbled madly as he kicked the front tyre over and over. Now it's started to rain again, and he's trying to manouver across three lanes of traffic, red faced and still muttering, presumably to call the NRMA, or to throw himself under a truck.

These scenes make me feel soooo relatively sane.