I was in Melbourne recently - work, the usual thing - days packed from dawn 'til dusk with meetings, and preparation for meetings, and actions following meetings. Late one night I tossed exhaustion and responsibility to one side to claim a sweet dark half hour for myself, and went wandering down Bourke Street mall to look at the Christmas decorations. They were perfectly pleasant, but it was on the walk back to the hotel that I happened across one of those scenes that are only ever found by chance - a man busking, making music from junk.
True junk - his instruments comprised an old oil tin, a saucepan lid screwed to a stand, a used plastic container of some description, a variety of empty and de-labelled tins (somehow that detail seemed important). He was drumming away upon them as if his very life depended upon it, generating a cheerful cacophony.
Nearby stood a small knot of young-ish people, probably drunk-ish, dancing like happy puppets to the noise. Whenever a passer-by paused to drop a coin into the busker's cap, the puppets would cheer and enthusiastically high-five the donor. Whether this was an incentive to donate or not was hard to tell.
A little further back, perched on the stone curlicue of one of the gates of Chinatown, was a couple. Stoned without a doubt, and in the process of becoming stonier still, they sat contentedly on one another, gazing blankly into space, air-drumming to the beat.
This is not a story, of course - just an observational piece recording one of those scenes which made my heart swell with love for the beautiful oddness of humanity, and the cities which draws them together in concentrated doses. Amid many more dark hours of work and responsibility, the memory of that bright street and that mad noise held its glow.