Protesting

Midday we leave for the city. (I can’t help but think my days off have been spoilt by this talk of me going back to the office on Monday, I really don’t want to go back to the office, but I try to put it out of my mind.) Saturday is a day for going out to lunch, and I am concentrating on that.

We pass the Italian guy outside the gourmet organic grocer doing demonstrations with olive oil and bread out on the footpath with all his produce around him. He is clearly flogging olive oil.

I hear him say to a captive customer, “It’s a medicine.” With a sweeping Sale-of-the-century hand gesture

I think, how Italian can you get. I comment to Sam. “Cures what ails you.”

“It’s a miracle,” Sam replies. “Nectar of the gods.”

The sun is shining. We walk up Gertrude Street to Nicholson Street.

We catch the tram because Sam was hungry. The tram sits at the intersection of Nicholson Street and Victoria Parade, for 4, or 5, sets of light changes, maybe more. We haven’t paid, one stop outside the free zone? I’m not paying $6 for one stop. And the way they have taken out the stops now due to privatisation, it is three blocks if you walk the one stop. So, it is stressful siting there. It finally turns down Victoria Street to go down La Trobe Street, redirected away from Spring Street, its usually route, because of the protests today in Spring Street with the anti vaxxers and the anti everything brigade. We get off at Elizabeth Street. We see people carrying signs. Mother of 3, pro choice, marching for freedom. Marching for freedom? If you don’t want to follow the laws of the state all you have to do now is classify your illicit behaviour as a bid for freedom, apparently.

Why do they all seem to be of a ‘certain’ type? The disenfranchised, the left behind. (A year, or so ago, I was going to buy an investment property and I hesitated and I didn’t buy it and now, to a certain extent, I feel left behind, so I can’t imagine how the people who don’t own property must feel) Those who have lost work during the lockdowns. Those who see their situation going backwards.

What are they protesting about? I can’t help but think it is about the greater inequality that has been promoted by 10 years of successive Liberal/conservative government. 20 years, really, of conservative policy that is government for the rich and not for the disadvantage. (And yet they will all still vote for the Liberal Govt who will offer tax cuts purely for political purposes)

We peel off at Melbourne Central, away from the anti’s.

12.25pm. We’re at Chilli India eating lunch. Goat Biryani and Chad Dosa. Cute waiter, with an engaging manner. Smiley, appealing. And a twinkle in his eye.

We go to JB HiFi afterwards in Melbourne Central. Sam looks at and buys games. I look at the CDs and the DVDs. I chat to a cute Asian shop assistant with a chunky arse, black shorts running with active wear leggings underneath, about the miniseries Feud. They don’t have it. I don’t buy anything.

Then we go to JB HiFi in Bourke Street, right into the middle of the protests so it would seem. They were walking down Bourke Street from parliament house. They are a fairly subdued bunch. Lots of signs. Quite a few are holding up Trump signs, which I just don’t understand. I see a guy with a red Make Australia Great Again cap on. (I guess that’s what happens when the major economic power in the world votes Satan into power)

After JB HiFi we walk home up to the top of Bourke Street to protest base camp. It looks like a bikie and bikie moll end of year Xmas picnic. It has a touch of the Mad Max’s about it all. There really aren’t that many people there, a few hundred, perhaps.

We were walking up Parliamentary Reserve and I commented about all the Trump signs I’d seen to Sam.

“I don’t get why people like Trump.”

A passed-middle-aged woman sitting on a park bench piped up. “Trumpy, Trumpy, I like Trumpy. Do you like Trumpy?”

“But we’re Australia, not America,” I said.

She looked confused momentarily. (now I do wonder if she understood the distinction?) “It doesn’t matter to me, I like Trumpy, do you like Trumpy?”

Honestly, she sounded like a 10 year old, and not a smart 10 year old at that. If she’d bounced up and down in her seat and slapped the park bench with her hands on either side of herself I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Why? He’s a racist and a liar,” I said. (I immediately regret saying that. I wished I'd said, Can you tell me why you like him?)

She looked away dismissively. “I’m not going to go into it with you.”

I turned and walked away. She said something else, but I was no longer listening.