1375 Steps

There are 1375 steps from my front door to my bus stop. To my left, I pass 31 houses, three small apartment blocks and one no-name petrol station. This morning there were 16 cars and two motorbikes on its grey concrete concourse. The two bikes have been tucked away in the corner near a faded blue skip and a distressed looking self-serve ice chest for as long as I can remember.

I pass one house with a slowly fading red ski boat in the driveway. I’ve not ever seen it moved in the eleven years I have walked this street. Its sagging trailer seems almost infected with dull red spots of rust, almost a counterpoint to the fading red of what must have been a jaunty little thing. Once, long ago.

The owner of the boat parks his medium sized tow truck across the road from his house, it is there, two mornings out of five, on average. He is the kind of guy that, for whatever reason, feels compelled to amass a small collection of tired looking vehicles parked askew under his wide carport, or left somewhat higgledy-piggledy on his small but patchy front lawn.?

The cars and bikes occasionally come and go but the boat remains. I’ve often wondered why. I met him once, as he kindly charged a flat car battery for me late one inclement night. He refused payment but accepted a six pack. I wish I had asked him about the boat.

The house to his right is a tidy, compact, newly built home. The owner is trying to grow a hedge, and presumably a patina of comparative respectability. He must stare aghast each morning at his neighbour’s exception to the tidy rows of established houses that line the street.

The area was subdivided in 1928. The vast majority of the homes are solid double brick, red tiled, mostly hedged and all respectfully built to conform to solid middle-class aspirations, naturally to a repeating but varied pattern.

But things are changing, they always do. On the other side of the street, I’ve noticed some enterprising soul has craftily combined two blocks and are constructing what might be a small set of town houses. I hope they look ok when they are done but while I live in hope, I realise that it is Sydney, and I should probably expect something very bland. Ironstone grey seems very popular these days. But I’m guessing there will be some tile on a wall somewhere.

I know the changing of the seasons. In which gardens the netted fruit trees bloom, that particular power line where the Possums cross the street in the early evening. The lengthening days and shortening nights. Just as I know the ebb and flow of morning and evening traffic and the recognised but unknown neighbours going about their own quiet business.

I can easily close my eyes and visualise each of those 31 houses, three apartment blocks and the no-name petrol station.

Averaged over two weeks, the wait at my bus stop is now 8 minutes, 45 seconds. Before covid it was 4 minutes, 10 seconds. I still take 1375 steps.