Woolloomoobroom
March 8, 2005
We live in Woolloomooloo, a city suburb which strives to maintain a glossy sheen of yuprosexual, waterfront, Russell-Crowe-is-our-neighbour style. Scratch beneath the thin surface, though, and you’re presented with what Woolloomooloo has been all along - a fairly seedy (although quiet) suburb which isn’t necessarily that safe at night.
We literally have a bad side of the tracks: once you cross under the elevated railway bridge that runs over the suburb, things take a bit of a turn for the worse. There’s a reason our police station squats underneath the railway - it’s all a bit CSI: Woolloomooloo at times around here.
Still, I’ve always taken comfort in that I can at least wander around during the daytime without much trouble - well, I could, until I had a recent crime report from our neighbours.
“I was just walking down to the wharf for breakfast,” he nodded at me, deeply concerned for the suburb’s crime rate. “Just minding my own business. Suddenly, from out of a gate, this woman came screaming at me and attacked me.”
This was a bit of a shock to me. “Are you okay?” I asked, fairly concerned. “Did you get hurt at all?”
“Well,” he pondered slowly. “You know how… sometimes you can tell you’re about to get hurt? You can see something coming at you, and you’re absorbing it all in slow motion… you know you’re about to be hurt, it’s all coming at you in terrifying detail?”
“Crikey,” I replied. “Did they try to knife you or wack you with a bit of two by four or something?”
“Well… nearly,” he mused, stroking his head, gazing upwards. “She hit me with a broom.”
I nodded, expecting more to the tale… then registered from the finality of his statement, that the broom was his mortal injury. How does one respond to someone’s confession that they were nearly beaten to death with a broom?
The answer is by swallowing your laughter, and saying the first unfortunate thing which springs into your mind. “Well,” I gulped, trying not to let my grin rise to the surface. “You know, umm… that’s bad. But at least you were… clean?”
We’d better watch out before the Macquarie Fields kids get wind of the household cleaning implement riots going down over here.
