The Weird and the Wonderful

Sam wanted to have a shower around 11am. “Should I wash Bruno?” Bruno has been itching and scratching lately. And there was the smell of cheesy popcorn, I smelt, from earlier in the morning.

Sam always wants to wash the dogs more, and I always want to wash them less, and recently Sam showed me a YouTube video that said when they smell like cheesy popcorn it is time to wash them.

So, Sam washed Bruno, which is normally always my job. I was, Sam dries.

So, a little while later, I was walking Bruno up Gertrude Street, cheating after he had a wash, walking him in the sun rather than spending forever bent over him with a towel. Drying dogs after a wash is my least favourite thing.

However, I decided Gertrude Street wasn’t the sunniest street on the block, so I was heading for an alternative route, when, of course, Bruno determinedly started to sniff around the base of some of the trees, just before we got to Young Street.

“Oh, come on,” I said and I gave a tug on the lead. Bruno resisted. “Oh, come on,” I said and I gave a tug on the lead. Bruno resisted. “Oh, come on,” I said and I gave a tug on the lead. Bruno resisted.

You get the picture.

I tried to pull him away from the object of his sniffing, so we could head out from the shade into the sun in Brunswick Street, so he wouldn’t get a chill.

A guy standing in a shop doorway looking at his phone, looked up momentarily and smiled so gorgeously at Bruno. Ah, how lovely. I’m sure I twitched my nose at him.

A woman standing in the next shop doorway with a mug in her hand, not exactly sure where she fitted in, turned to me and said, deadpan,

“Your fault for having a dog that looks like you.”

I looked at her, and initially thought, wow! What am I to make of that? She held my gaze, but didn’t say anything else. She just stood there with her mouth partly open. I was puzzled as to what she meant. In the next millisecond, I decided that this was one of those occasions where I didn’t have to, actually, say a word, and I didn’t. I just turned and walked away, a lost art I told myself.

I think she was making an attempt at humour, but I don’t really know.

Bruno and I walked down the west side of Brunswick Street in the glorious sunshine. Some of the old ladies where hanging out outside the charity shop sitting in those old fashioned rockers, that my grandmother used to have, (that’s the grandmother who drank brandy like a fish and chain smoked Kool cigarettes, and not the grandmother who was a property developer, you understand) that are covered in material and they press down in the seat to rock. They patted Bruno as he passed by.

One of them said, “A face only a mother could love.”

I thought, I have been hearing a version of that repeatedly today, ‘a dog that looks like you’, ‘a face only a mother could love.’ We seemed to have somewhat of a theme going on here.

I mumbled something about Bruno having just had a shower, and I reached down and rubbed Bruno’s fur and I was quite happy with how dry he was by that stage, but the old women in the chairs had lost interest by then and had looked away, and I was talking to myself.

We walked up King William Street and then up the pathway to the dog park and I was going to let Bruno off if no one was playing ball, he still being obsessed with balls. As it turned out, three black guys were kicking a soccer ball, so I didn’t let Bruno off his lead.

We walked up Webb Street to (my street) and then up (my street).

A woman crossed over (my street) from the other side and walked up (my street) in front of us. She was dressed in black with a pink cotton back pack slung over her back, she walked the walk of someone who was frail and hesitant. She had spider’s legs for fingers and she seemed to be repelled by the sun.

There was a helicopter flying overhead, at which she looked around as if it made her nervous. As she kind of cringed, I could see she looked a little like Bette Davis post stroke, but younger.

Then an unregistered white Mitsubishi ute with both its back lights smashed off pulled up next to her and the guy driving leant out holding something in his hand, which I couldn’t make out, and said to the woman,

“I’ll give you $40 for one cigarette.”

She looked over at him and kind of recoiled.

“I’ll give you $40 for one cigarette.”

She shook her head in the negative. Or she intimated she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“The helicopter will pick you up and take you away,” he said. Then he sped off.

The sun shone. Bruno and I passed her. As I got the rubbish in, she smiled at me with her disfigured face and then kept walking.

(On the 6pm news I saw the guy in the unregistered Mitsubishi ute get arrested in Carlton accused of multiple robberies across Melbourne. He’d probably been arrested just after the cigarette incident.)