Accumulation

Mike’s
Pith & Wind cont.
..It’s bad enough having stuff thrust upon me, but when I actively seek
to bring more of it into the house, I begin to wonder at my sanity. Afterall,
I’ve already got a whole lot more stuff than I can handle and only a tiny
house – something’s gotta go! My latest out-of-control fetish is
for buying CDs. There are so many ‘60s and ‘70s vintage records
out there I never owned in the first place and that I just have to have. It’s
got so crazy I’ve even bought a couple of bargain priced classics twice!
However, one of my most enduring and embarrassing accumulated possessions is
a book. Along with CDs, I’ve got an excess of books, but this particular
book refuses to lose itself gracefully amongst my late wife’s dog-eared
crime novels. Even now I know I could locate it unerringly amongst all the dross.
What’s worse, this book has been burning a hole in my conscience since
I first arrived in Melbourne late in 1966. It’s not the subject matter,
or even the illustrations in the book. It’s the fact that it’s a
library book.
The odd thing is that I wasn’t in any way an habitué of the Christchurch
Public Library. In fact, I’m pretty certain this trophy was a result of
my one and only foray into those hallowed precincts. I’ve been back to
Christchurch a number of times since, of course, and I may have even taken the
book back with me with the intention of anonymously returning it – but
I couldn’t, and I still can’t.
So, there it sits, mutely accusing me every time I enter the room. I’ll
eventually get round to writing a will, and one of the items that I’ll
gladly pass on to my son is ‘the book’. (You deal with it).
Some of you might be wondering if I have too much time on my hands with the
recent series in Stop Press on public toilets. I confess that toilets are an
obsession of mine. Part of the suspension of disbelief in (Hollywood) movies
is that no-one goes to the toilet – unless there’s a dramatic/comic
point to be made. But the reality is that when you gotta go, you gotta go. For
instance, there are endless stories I could relate about Bill being caught short
in the most unlikely places – but I’ll leave those to Bill’s
memoirs. I’ll just take the opportunity to relate a tale about modern
toilets that defies tasteful pictorial backup (so to speak), and so won’t
appear in Stop Press.
I was recently called to account at the Chadstone Shopping Centre. A number
of the ‘rest rooms’ are pretty new, and I happened to lob in one
of those. I noted that the urinals were those self-flushing jobs, but it didn’t
occur to me the bowls were too.
I was sitting there, minding my own business, when I suddenly felt my appendage
taking an inadvertent cold shower. The bloody thing had gratuitously flushed
on me and my bits! During my five minute or less occupation, this abject performance
was repeated no less than four times – my shocked appendage had nearly
retreated into oblivion by the fourth flush. If one needed reminding that machines
are cold, heartless bastards, this was the perfect demonstration.
There are millions of toilets in the naked city. This has been but one of them.