He was half in, half out as I walked through shifting shadows cast by the stately elms. I could hear him from the Hampden hotel  until all the way up to the clock tower. His conversation was a live broadcast for all to hear. Obviously he didn’t have a mobile or he’d be using it- probably still be loud. I overheard who’d been ripping him off, who’d been sleeping with who and what had happened to his car while my eyes finished interrogating a faded epitaph on the base of a statue – John Curdie- he loved mercy and justice.  The man finished his public broadcast and got into a utility with huge whippy aerials and stickers plastered all over the back, a V8 motor gargled to life and climbed a hill of revs as it paced off down the dormant Friday night street, and there was silence. 

A thought came to me of when we were kids and we were making a call from that very same phone box, then  it had no door and smelt vaguely of urine. I remember a tatty eared phone book – how the hell did that not get stolen/vandalised? Today’s booth had been made so everything was hoon-proof as possible. The body of the phone itself with huge wrestlers shoulders and armour plating worthy of a troop carrier. Inside various tags from wanna be graffiti artists adorned the back wall – for a good time call 3#&^%&*. All the usual. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to use one, now the mobile phone is a second brain we carry round with us every where. Phone numbers/ diaries / appointments/ applications all on that palm sized piece of technology- star trek come true, the only thing missing is the ‘beam me up Scotty facility’. I’m working on that in the back room of my mind because travel is SO boring – the getting to places, the time lost in between – Driving, the monotony of being on the road, the mesmorisation of the miles and then the arriving. I think I was just about ready to bite my arm off on that three hour trip from Camperdown to Melbourne when I was kid- you know the tyranny of time thing. As a kid an hour seems to last a life time, so three life times in the car was pretty horrific. The white Valiant hemi 256, a big square thing ,with that funny radio that had all the call signs of the stations instead of the frequencies…….