# My Morning Walk to Work

Spring; and finally Melbourne shakes off that infernal, ubiquitous, red-
and- black- on- camel check. Worn with brio by few, and bloody-
mindedness by many. It’s Burberry’s, I think. This January, across
Europe, and in Spain, especially, it was _everywhere_.

This is how I get to work each morning: I wake up at some time between
7.00 and 8.30, depending on how late I was up the night before. I take a
shower and eat cornflakes. I collect my things and leave via the front
door. I turn left and walk along Rowena Parade, turning right on Lennox
Street. I walk down the hill, passing a shop with a sign outside that
reads “MOLE SKINS \$66”. Next I come to the London Tavern Hotel, which I
have not yet been inside.

Further down I pass “Contin Hairdresser”, which is open about three days
a week for four hours at a time. It’s run by a strange old Greek man
with huge swooping sideburns, and, though it does appear that his
primary business is hair, the shop is strangely filled with some very
old junk. So if for some reason you want to buy old, sun-faded packets
of chewing gum say, I now know where you can get some.

A block more down Lennox Street is the “Hellas Continental Cake Shop”,
where you can buy quite good almond cookies. If you’re short, you can
through a high window see what looks like cigarette smoke being produced
by something in the kitchen next door: if you’re tall you can see that
the smoke is in fact produced, with gruff pleasure, by the baker
himself.

When I get to “Curry Munchers”–Indian take-away–on the corner of Lennox
and Swan, I turn right. Soon I come to the Corner Hotel; from there I go
under the railway bridge, taking care to walk down the middle of the
footpath, because that’s where the dog turds are least likely to be.

Richmond Station is just after the railway bridge. I walk through the
barriers and onto platform six, from where I take a train to
Huntingdale. This part of my journey takes about six or seven minutes.

It takes about half an hour to get to Huntingdale Station, and six or
seven to bus to Monash University. From the bus loop I walk to my
office; this takes about five minutes. It typically takes an hour to get
to work each day.

I’ve never had a “neighbourhood” before, by which I mean a place where
there are places you can walk to. All my life I’ve lived in the suburbs.
So this is nice. I’m also enjoying public transport, although as has
been pointed out, I’ve never had to suffer the crush (and odours) of
peak-hour travel. But fun stuff happens on public transport. A few days
ago a guy got on the train carrying, in one hand, a half-eaten stick of
salami, and in the other, a plastic bag containing a family-sized block
of “Old Gold” chocolate. He finished his salami off pretty quick. When
you get a craving for salami, you can’t delay, you must act. I
understand.

N.B. Manu Chao is _genius_. Have you heard his album Clandestino?