Troubled Skies

He was angry and he didn't know why. Wonder why this is the unhappiest place in Australia, you only have to look at the traffic jams every morning; the absolute incompetence of the town planners that has led to this state. Everyone hates the politicians now. They sit in their luxury cars and everyone else is jammed into buses and trains and long queues of cars. There was a grating sound in the car and a grating sound in his head. No word from Col. He was so sorry it had happened this way. There was never the right way for these things to work out. His head hurt and the tears kept welling up and he just felt damned irritable. Someone was always riding him, someone was riding him now. The only solution was to outlive the bastards.

It's been hot; muggy, and the sky was closing in, the traffic closing in; the colours closing in. There wasn't any justice in the way things worked. There wasn't any smooth path to an uncomplicated future. He could do the sea change just like that; but after divorce and bankruptcy and all the crap that had gone down; there wasn't the money to buy any dignity in old age.

I don't like to bother anybody at work, Col said, after standing outside my house all day. She wants to be a doctor, you've got to be kidding. He looked off his tree, standing there, staring out the window; time is a traveller, Tenterfield saddler; and the traffic and the humpy pumpy and the overwhelming frustration, if he could lash out, if he could break something, he would. None of it was worthwhile; none of it came close to being sensible. His angst merged into the dismal stretches of the city; they circled, looking for his point of vulnerability. He just pretended they didn't exist; that his life was not under threat; that nothing would change.