Year of the Ox starts

Spike and I sat in Belmore Park at lunch time, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of final preparations for this evening's launch of the year of the ox. It was hot so there was more than a little exasperation and frustration in evidence as people sorted their tents of Buddhist charities, hare krishna brown rice, private health insurance and all the rest. Short-tempered men squeezed promotional Volkswagons into tight spaces between trees and portaloos. A bored man driving a fork lift truck deposited refrigerator units to ice cream tents. Swarming through the construction site, dozens of body-painted cricket fans .... slightly worse for their morning's drinking sessions and the lunch time humidity ... made their way to Central station and the Sydney Cricket Ground for the one day-day match against South Africa.

We sat on a bench in the shade of a tree watching the chaos organise itself. We shared a smoked salmon salad and an egg sandwich, while Spike read aloud from John Boyd's Pollenators Of Eden (chapter 8). I can't tell you how good it was to be there, out of the office; remembering there's a real world.