Lockdown - Day #12

The ghost of trams skittering out of Princes Park on a one-way trip to back from whence they came… silently surfing the stone cuttings/crumbling carpet out as far as nowhere. The tramshed, distant and foreboding, garish holiday season adverts festoon the way. The melting ice cream dripping on to the back of the seat in front.

Housemartins and Swallows gather to fly south. Starlings will wait to form a Murmuration over the Pier a little later on my walk. Back on the tram a Lyons Maid block slips from the oblong cone onto the wooden floor. I walk by the Leisure Pool and am brushed by the group of teenagers from the Grammar & High School, smelling of chlorine, Blue Stratos and ulterior motives. “Somebody will get chucked tonight"…

The sound of The Isley Brothers fills the night and the hostess lets the corner of her blonde bob fall over one eye. Meanwhile, the heady anguish of a Friday night rolls on inexorably to a hastily snatched kiss and the promise of a visit to the Crumbles to follow.

One day, in the heart of a global lockdown, these nights will seem like Paradise made real!