I like buses and I like maps, so it all works out ’cause sometimes a girl’s got to get places.



Yesterday I hopped the 442 up George Street to an architectural walk in the city, you cannot say I am not clever and serious. Okay, well, actually it was because the promo literature said the walks are led by young architects. Everybody likes a young architect!

Oh, stop. I care DEEPLY about architecture. And if it just so happens that I now know architectural things because a bright-eyed curly-haired young architect told me them, ALL THE BETTER. For example: There is sandstone under much of New South Wales, sandstone that leaches rainwater and nutrients from the topsoil, so that local florae have to be hardy and cunning in order to survive. The plants emit poisons, then, that keep animals from eating them, and when the trees shed, come tree-shedding season, (I know it seems like this story is getting nowhere fast), (his eyes were very nice), (and he had small cloth-covered buttons on his shirt), when the trees shed, the leaves, INSTEAD OF DECOMPOSING ON THE GROUND, SIT ABOUT AND EMIT POISONS. West of Sydney, the Blue Mountains have been attracting squirrels and, I dunno, wombats, and nature lovers for years. That smoky mountainy blue, that mysterious enveloping blue, that, my friends, is THE BRILLIANT BLUE GLOW OF PLANT POISON IN THE AIR. And perhaps this does not seem architectural, except for the architect who told me it, but it is part of a whole story about a whole city, and every story has to start somewhere, and sandstone is just as good a place as any.

This afternoon the 378 took me to the fashions of Paddington and back. If you are just quick enough, you can see, from the bus, the questions along Oxford Street: Have you seen Francis? Have you seen Timothy? Have you seen love?

And if you are quite eagle-eyed, you can even see, from the bus, CC and the baby waiting outside the video store back in Balmain so we can go have a sunset gelato in the park.