This street never sleeps. Well, perhaps it dozes off for an hour just before the dawn, but it's a troubled, fitful thing. There are often screams, or wild laughter. They may be coming from the boarding house. They may be from passers-by, or sometimes the late, late revellers.
The first sign of routine is the man in the cap. He walks fast, upright and tall, a newspaper folded in one hand. At every parking -ticket machine, he checks for change left by a careless or rushed customer. He must have succeeded sometimes before, because, like a pokies player, he seems to believe there will be a payout one day, contrary to all the evidence.
Next, the trams begin their thunderous journeys. The first, an eye-catching yellow, clatters over the lines outside my window where trams change direction. The racket is loud in the quiet dawn as grey light filters into my rooms, becoming gradually brighter than the neon street lights which have kept darkness at bay through the night. Later that racket will be just a part of a louder hum of incessant traffic, and the car horns that angry drivers sound to remind recalcitrants of the no right turn rule at the complex intersection sixty metres up the road. Sometimes a powerful motorbike will thunder by to exclude all other sounds.
The sound of squabbling birds rules at dawn, between the trams. Opposite my windows, the blinds of which I never close, there is a pizza/snack shop with black and bright orange signage. It does its best business between midnight and dawn. It sells slices served on paper plates, and hungry drunkards get a few potato wedges with every slice. By dawn all the bins are filled with these plates, to overflowing, with bits of crust and unwanted toppings spilling onto the streets. Come the dawn, come the seagulls, fighting each other for bites. Come the pigeons, come the crows. Then come the cleaners.
A small army arrives each morning, every morning, with vacuum trucks, street-sweepers, leaf blowers, the sweepers themselves, and the garbos and all other conceivable cleaning apparatus and personnel. I am mildly surprised anew each day at their enterprise and spirit. The street sparkles, clean. The commuters who now take up the scene don't have to contend with mountains of trash or the squalling, brawling birds.
The first of the boarding house dwellers spill out, and mingle with other commuters on their way to work. Later in the day, those who slept in, some unemployed and some unemployable, will spell out. Sometimes there will be fights, sometimes running brawls with baseball bats. But these are few. More often there is abuse exchanged loudly up and down the street, and glass smashed, fruit hurled, bins punched with closed fists. And later, after dark, these denizens mingle with other, darker visitors. There are often police interventions.
But in the mornings, sunniness prevails, whatever the weather. Ah yes, the weather. The people of this teeming metropolis dress according to the supposed season, not the weather. There are overcoats in the winter, though it may be hot for parts of the day. There are t-shirts and short sleeves in the summer, though a bitter chill might blow up the street from the bay, causing shivers. But that sunniness of morning is always there, even when the clouds are grey or black. It's as if each person sees a bright new beginning, forgiving the world yesterday's sadnesses.
A schoolboy dressed in shades of blue, a black-eyed, black-haired boy makes his way towards the tram which will take him into his inner city school. There is that sense of the new beginning about him every day. A smile seems ready to light up his face as he looks about, and indeed, his face lights up when he spies a friend.
With him, the other thousands boarding trams, taxis, buses and bikes all leave, to be swallowed by the inner-city till it's time for their return later in the day.
For a while, the smell of coffee rules. The burger joint has opened for business, and is serving bacon and eggs and coffee. Later in the day it will serve the best suburban hamburger in the city, juicy and tasty, along with kebabs and chickens and salads. This kind of place is on every street in every suburb, but this is one of the best.
