City Hum

The fluorescent light hummed away its merry monotone tune, but still the cafe remained a little sullen. The early winters evening had wrapped its cold colourless hands around the place with greedy revere. A deep fryer sizzled in the back, the cook's shuffled feet another instrument added to the soundtrack. The kids were eating happily but making little noise, their cheery red cheeks slowly warming and returning to their original pale rose pigment. A few shadows passed by the tall cafe front windows, mostly black blurs of indistinguishable age or sex. The smell of salt and vinegar and hot fried potato was strong to the point of intoxication. The night rumbled on for miles around, the city was happy. And for the most part, so were its people. S.H.

Ruby

There's a children's hospital in Melbourne. In Carlton I think it is. And at one point I had occasion to be working a day in that hospital. For the life of me I can't remember how I got there. I seem to recall catching a train into the centre. Silver and sleek, graffitied vistas along the way. From there on I think I must have walked. I ambled uphill for some ways, that I know to be true. It was quite early as well. Vacant building blocks and black gum stains on ashen paths. The security at the hospital was amazing, as well it should be. One of the first people I met during my day was Ruby. Ruby was four years old. And only just so, as she proudly told me. She wore these red Mary Jane style shoes, all shinny leather and sparkling silver buckles. They matched her name perfectly and seemed to me to be the perfect kind of shoes for splashing about in puddles. From then on I don't remember more than a handful of seconds or so that Ruby wasn't at my side. She turned out to be one of the coolest kids I ever did meet. I remember climbing on the playground and racing toy trucks with her. Ruby gifted me with a hug before I left that day. Given to a person that eight hours previous she didn't know from a bar of soap. Her little arms barely had enough length to wrap around my knees.
I lived for a further year and a half in the city of Melbourne after that day, but not another time did I see Ruby. She'd be a fair few more years older than four now, but every time I think of her she's wearing those bright red shoes. S.H.

The Symphony of Madness

The Symphony of Madness bothers me greatly. Not only are parental role models dwindling as parents seem to be deciding with more and more steady regularity that they are more important than their little ones, but because of this and the ready availability of digital media, kids have all too ready access to the Populars, who the children are forced to substitute as their secondary mentors. The problem with this is that the Populars are anything but role models. They facilitate and promote an image of human beings that is not only irresponsible, but for a vast number of the general population, unattainable. For the most part the Kings and Queens are oblivious. They serve only as the pretty puppets for the machine operators to twirl and preen, fully aware that the damage they are doing is not only far from innocent, but boarders on destructive and criminal. S.H.