Big City Dreaming

Another man in his sixties was found six months after his death in a housing department block called Joseph Banks, named after the settlement's first botanist. On the 15th floor of the towers of despair; or suicide towers as they are sometimes known. His skeleton just sitting at the table. A lot of people around there are off their heads in one way or another. The garbage smells at the front. It's not the place to end your days. Quiet. Reclusive man. Nobody wanted to intrude, to question where he might be.

It was Dossie's funeral today, the kids great grandmother. She helped establish one of the north shore's leading funeral parlours and so her funeral was very nicely done. The Camelia Chapel, large pink and white camelias; no expense spared.

The kids featured prominently in the photographic presentation of her life; music, flowers, expensive cotton. She was a tough old bird, that's all I can say. Moving speaches from the son and grandchildren. Not religious, she wasn't a religious person.

Clammy heat, here in the summer. The days passing with no rewind mechanism. The Opera House precincts another world entirely, the different languages of the tourists; the expensive restaurants piled on top of each other. In the car on the way back from the job the others joked: we don't know our neighbours, I'm a recluse, the only time I talk to them is to tell them not to make so much noise. We're all going to die like that, a skeleton at a table. We all laughed.