Shop 4/ 1 Dawson St Strathalbyn SA 5255 0438847329 tbkstrathalbyn@gmail.com Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am to 4pm

Tag: Street life

On the street this afternoon when I was leaning against the fence with a coffee

The Book Keeper4 Comments on On the street this afternoon when I was leaning against the fence with a coffee

Nothing is so satisfying as seeing what people do in autumn on Saturdays when it’s warm and nearly Easter, and we know that the warm weather is nearly at its finish line. It’s done a good job here. The fence is warm. Over the road two people are lying on the lawn. They have their phones on their chests, not looking at them because they are kind of asleep. It’s quiet most of the time, I’ve hardly had any customers. So I went outside and leaned against the warm fence.

First of all a ute and trailer went passed. Huge rolls of straw like golden Swiss rolls. And then a truck with sheep, so everything smelt like hot sheep. And then a ute with black smoke at the exhaust, so everything smelt precisely like …. that.

I moved down the fence, sticking to the sunshine because I like it today. It doesn’t have its February commitment.

A father and child pass me close. They’re silent. They walk exactly the same way. Their ankles turn in at the same angle. The child walks behind, then side by side, then in front, carrying paper bags of food from the bakery. The father adjusts his pace to avoid collision and to look after the truth.

Another younger couple come the other way. The young dad is wearing a backpack with a rope tied to back. The other end is tied to a go-kart. The go-kart burrs along behind him with a small child in the driver seat. The child is pedalling furiously and breathing hard but only goes at the pace of the parent pony anyway. The mother, turning back to look at them, looks pleased. She turns her head to one side to get all the information in and looks pleased. The father plods along. The child pedals. The child raises one hand in the air. The father, sensitive to the air, looks back and says, ‘Nearly there’.

Across the road a four-wheel drive pulling a trailer is trying to exit the carpark. In the trailer is a neat little dog kennel, tied in with a thousand straps and ropes. It will not fall out. The man, an older man, is talking to another man in the passenger seat. I can see them talking hard. I think they are father and son.

The reason I think they are father and son is because when the car behind them sounds the horn (this is because they are so slow the exit the carpark) they both jerk to look behind them in the same way.

Right in front of me a man has parked a motorbike and left two helmets dangling from the handlebars along with a beautiful pair of lime green gloves. It’s the gloves that make me stare. And the phone left on the seat. Sitting there on the bike seat and shining in the sun Not important enough to take to the bakery. Good.

Across the road a man climbed out of his car and walked across the park to the toilets. He walked with a stiff gait. He looked as though he’d been driving for a long time. He came back via the rubbish bins and threw something away. Then he stood with hands on hips and looked at the bin for a long time.

There’s a huge group of people coming up the road, and I might go back inside the shop. There’s about 12 of them. But when I look down the road again, they have all disappeared. Then a car passes and I see a face at the window smiling and smiling, apparently at me, but I don’t know who it is. I just remember the mouth and the smiling teeth that caught me in their beam.

That’s how people drive past. I just see an intense flash of person. Drivers slumped back. Drivers upright or leaning forward over the steering wheel, urging the engine onward. Masks hanging from the rear vision mirror. A passenger talking and talking at a driver, whose face over the steering wheel is frozen.  I can see the talking mouth of the passenger, like energetic moving rubber describing too many ideas.

There’s a man crossing the road straight toward me. He looks left and right, checking traffic, and continues on straight at me. He looks left and right and then at me. I think, do I know you? But I don’t. He looks determined. I think, why is he aiming right at my piece of fence. He strides on and gets to the kerb. I think, turn left you dick. And he suddenly does, not even seeing me, aiming clumsily for the bakery and stumbling a bit over the kerb and me backed against the fence thinking I’m going to write about you.

Two young men pass with masks, keys, wallets and phones in their hands, jangling all their necessity. A car passes with one person inside: the driver. She stops to give way at the intersection. She is talking away at something and gesturing, as though trying to understand it. Like I am.

Sculpture by Elizabeth Price

The man who had a pair of pliers in his back pocket

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Two old blokes  crossing the road in front of my shop door. Waiting at the kerb first because the traffic is busy. They wore famer’s clothes. What are these? I don’t know, it was the boots that made me think it. They were discussing something of intense interest to both of them. When there was a clear spot in the traffic, they didn’t take it. One was finishing a point and the other was listening and nodding. So he must have been right. He used his hand to bang out the importance of it. I could tell that his hands had done a lot of work.

Then another break in the traffic and it got quiet. The sun shone down. I wondered idly if they might take it. Well, they tried. They bent forward and made sprinting motions. They were still talking though. In the quiet I heard them. One man said (as they made their move), ‘Well, my argument on the cat side of it is – ‘

Suddenly a car with small dogs at each window passed in front of them. Each window had about a one inch gap at the top. Three dogs were screaming furiously through the gaps, one in the front and two from the back.

The men stopped abruptly and watched the car go past. One of them said, ‘Jesus.’

Then they finished the crossing. One of them had a pair of pliers in his back pocket. I still remember that.

Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch

The excellent and very precise things we do

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I saw and heard three things happen while sitting here in the shop and looking out the door. They all made sense.

A man was walking past the door. He pulled off his mask, but the mask was caught around his sunglasses. He shook the mask madly, and the sunglasses landed on the footpath in front of him, got caught on his foot, and flew across the footpath. He yelled out, ‘Get back here.’

Across the road a bright red car towing a very vintage caravan has stopped. A man has raised the bonnet and is looking at the engine. There’s a bucket and a bottle of something next to his feet. He walks around and speaks to the driver. Then he walks to the back of the car and opens the boot. He pulls out two camping chairs and throws them on the road. The driver looks in the rear vision mirror and then looks back at his phone.  The man at the boot throws a pair of shoes on the road. Then he slams the boot down and goes back and sits in the passenger seat.

A very small boy, about 3, stops outside the shop to look directly up at one of my hanging balloons. He says, Is that a horse?’ His dad, who is eating a roll, says, ‘It might be. You reckon?’ The child nods. It is a horse.

Illustration by Pierre Renollet

Australia in the 20th Century

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A man came past the door with two books in a basket on the front of his gopher. He wanted to sell the books. One was called Australia in the 20th Century and the other one was a book of photographs.

I already had the first one and I didn’t need the second, so I said, ‘thank you, but no’.

He was sad and looked it. Then I felt sad. Then he suddenly took off in the gopher and called back to me, ‘we all have our troubles’.

The difference between working in a book shop last year and every other year I’ve been here

The Book Keeper2 Comments on The difference between working in a book shop last year and every other year I’ve been here

There is no difference between last year and every other year I’ve been here. There were small things, like mask wearing and checking in, but people, and my shop, basically remained the same:

  • The quality of customer-peering (through the door) remained the same
  • The record number of books held under one arm while browsing stayed the same (9)
  • The same books fell off shelves and tables in the night and dented their own covers
  • The streams of conversation passing the door were as intense, rich, and deeply textured as in 2014
  • Dogs still urinated just outside my door
  • Children still read on their knees and replaced the books backwards
  • Window books continued to draw clear, crisp and authoritative comments from passers-by.
  • Young people gazed through the front window at a single book on the table with the same unreadable facial expression.
  • Readers still bought bookmarks
  • Everyone still turned to open the door the wrong way
  • Readers still went silent when they find a book they really want and then breath slowly outwards
  • People still come in thinking I’m the bakery

What didn’t stay the same:

  • My landlord died

This was sad because Malcolm liked my shop and used to leave books for me in the storage room. It’s only because of Malcolm and Ann that I’m still here.

I’ve been really lucky for a long time.

Sculpture by Eudald De Juana

Some people got out of a car and had a big old argument!

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From where I sit, I can hear everything that happens outside the shop. And see everything. All I wanted to know was how these three were related because they clearly were. They were familiar; they knew each other because they finished each other’s sentences and commanded the group while ignoring each other’s commands to achieve the same thing.

She had left something at home.

‘God, where is it then.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Jesus.’

The other she, and the accompanying he, stood and looked at the culprit, who was on her phone.

‘Might as well go home.’

‘The phone looked up. ‘We don’t even need it. Stop frothing.’

‘God.’ They all turned away from each other.

He got back in the car. The young women looked at each other. One came up to the door and looked in.

‘God. It’s a book shop.’

She returned to culprit, and they both stood looking down at her phone. Culprit was chewing gum fast.

‘Stop looking like that.’

‘We’re going home. Get in the car.’

So they didn’t come into the shop and buy a book. They went home. I watched them through the window in the front room. When they drove off, he was smiling.

Illustration by Jack Vittriano

Do you think she ought to have apologised?

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This conversation whipped past my shop door and was gone before I could catch the interesting tiger tail. This single question sang out clearly and steadily and remained in the air after the talkers had gone; it hung there. I saw it.

What had she done? Fault is awkward because we all have a bit. So I wanted to know. A sustaining dose of someone else’s faults will quieten mine. For half an hour.

The walkers were walking shoulder to shoulder and leaning in, as you do when sharing things delicate. As we do.
Once I found keys in our shed door that ought not to have been there. They were jammed in awkwardly and left there for three days. I said, ‘Who left those there? We could have been robbed.’
But a grandson owned up immediately. ‘Me, Nanny. I wanted to get Pa’s wire scissors and make a hole in your fence.’ He looked at me, pleased with the vision of himself making a hole in our fence. I said delicately to Pa, ‘Do we need a hole in our fence?’
The walkers who passed my shop discussing the apology were women and young. I can tell that because of the pace and strength of the walk. They don’t lean forward. They were upright. They challenged the sky: get out of our way. They frowned slightly, aware of the footpath, the kerb, and approaching traffic. They gave the apology a chance. Their shoulders were soft. They give the criminal a chance. Their eyes were considering. I saw that.

I myself gave the keys in our shed door a chance. I like those keys and their crooked hopeful insertion into the aching lock.
I wished those young women hadn’t been walking so fast. Why didn’t they hang about the doorway like men do, with time available, nothing to do, and an argument to win; a country to conquer. But they didn’t hang. They moved on.
Once a friend told me, ‘Apologise. Just fucking do it. If they’re worth it, apologise.’ She said this when we were raising kids and getting it wrong. Now I ache with the wrongness and the need to have apologised more. The keys must still be there.
Sometimes we don’t get an apology back. The same friend said, ‘So what. Get over it.’
She won me a country.

I wonder who those young women were, and who had the key in their lock, crooked.

Illustration by Ferdy Remijin

People going past, people going past

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I mean, going past the door of the shop because it’s the antique fair weekend, and people are everywhere, scattered like bits of energy all disagreeing in different directions and in different shapes.

A young couple rode past on bikes, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Not so funny now, is it?’ She said this. He said:

‘Yeah. Little bit.’

‘Nobody should be holding my horse’s head.’ She said this. He said:

‘Like, from a helicopter!’ Then they were gone. And I went back to shelving.

A man is moving gently along the shelves, lost in enormous choices. He doesn’t know he’s here. I am playing Don McLean’s Vincent and the man suddenly sings along; one line, ‘reflect in Vincent’s eyes of China blue…’ and he doesn’t know he’s done this.

‘Do you want to go in?’ People at the door. They don’t come in.

‘Where can we cross over?’ People near the door. They don’t cross the road. It’s too busy. They move on.

‘Look there. I used to have that.’ A man is bending toward a display in the window. But the lady he is with keeps walking. She is dressed in soft grey and soft blue and soft white; she is watching the ground carefully as she walks and does not look up at the books in the window that he wants to show her.

Little scooters shoot past with a child attached to the handles of each one. They are hilarious and agile and enjoying the tiny wheeled muscles under their feet. One screams, ‘Where’s Dillan?’

A lady is drifting right in front of me, looking from her phone to the back of a book and back to her phone. She has a red and blue mask. The masks make everyone’s faces smooth and blank, only the eyes left to say things.

Lads on scooters outside again, stopping and starting. Allowing pedestrians, launching off again, unconcerned with masks, uninterested in government, looking only for each other.

Girls walking shoulder to shoulder lean against the window to check phones.

George pours over the art books in the front room, his mask crooked and getting in the way of Rembrandt’s best.

A man with a bottle of milk in each hand lurches past, socks and thongs scraping the top off the footpath.

An argument whips the air outside; ‘Well you shouldena been driving through there, mate.’ Briefly, there’s a young man with red hair and excited eyes. Then he’s gone.

And one man in front of me, still there; moving along the titles and not really here, gone a thousand hectares inward and not likely to return.

Everything’s much the same

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The only difference is that people stand and read my wear a mask sign. Then they put one on and come in and look at me and smile reassuringly. Their masks move and wrinkle up as they try to smile. Then they remember the code, ‘Quick, Ruth, go back.’

‘Why? What’ve we done?’

‘Do the phone thing.’

‘Oh God, where’s me phone?’

I have so many paper signs on the door that passers-by have to peer through, moving their heads from side to side to see what’s in there.

Sarah wears her mask over her eyes as well. Can’t be too careful.

The door opens to let somebody in, but a friend pulls them back out. ‘No need to go in there. We got our books last week. Leave it Ginny.’

I am asked, ‘Can I ask how long it is between vaccinations?’

I am told to try and keep my footing.

There are not many cars going past. No horns, and hardly any trucks. And nobody is standing in my doorway and talking so I can eavesdrop and write it all down. People stop and read my door signs for ages, but in silence, and they usually don’t come in.

The traffic on the road is subdued as though thinking about something.

There’s only one person over at the bus stop.

Locals come in to make sure I am all right. Because of this, I am.

Three people pass the window, moving slowly the way older people do, and shoulder to shoulder. ‘I know what to get him… what about one of those new skateboard things. The young people like those.’

I hope they get him one.

Illustration by Brian Kershisnik

Small girl in bike helmet

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A little girl wearing a bike helmet is at the door. She’s still outside looking in; her helmet is knocking against the glass; she can’t get her eyes close enough to actually see anything. She jams the helmet against the glass, and this is when I look up and see here. Her eyes pierce the inside of my shop. Beams streaming in as though from a torch. As though from a lighthouse that won’t compromise. Her eyes rest on me. She makes no compromise; she won’t smile.

In she comes. Wearing pink and grey. The bike helmet still on, the straps swinging softly around her stern chin. She looks at me and does not smile. There are no adults with here. Is it Pippi Longstocking? I sit back and regard her with respect.  

She goes in amongst the books. I go back to Amor Towles.

When I look up she is crouched over Horrible Histories. Then she moves to historical. Then she moves to a shelf and looks at a copy of Inkheart. Then she’s out of my sight; must in sci fi.

Suddenly she’s passing me again. Silent and stern and the straps of her helmet swinging softly, respecting her chin.

She took ages closing the door. She stood in the gap, doing up the straps of the pink bike helmet and looking at me. She stood there for ages doing this. Then she was gone.