The Hobart Chronicles IV: People Are Strange

“People are strange, when you’re a stranger.”
- The Doors, People Are Strange (1967)

Week 4 ½.

Well, after all that whining last Friday, a stroke of good luck: the removalists had a cancellation and were able to deliver my house contents on Saturday, five days earlier than expected. Mind you, it cost me a further $200 (Saturday overtime) but the benefits of a long weekend to unpack outweighed further hip-pocket pain (in fact since committing to moving south my hip-pocket is so dreadfully abused that it no longer registers pain, just a lingering dull ache).

As the various items materialised off the truck, I immediately began to feel better. Even in boxes, these familiar things were as comforting to me as a lifesaver to a man overboard. It’s a great adventure being somewhere new, but it can be mentally tiring; once anchored, one can finally afford to care about what else is going on. And this is where it occurred to me that perhaps other people are different, and think differently.

It began with the unpacking. Since I was required to be down here about five minutes after the work was offered, I was obliged to spend those five minutes wisely, in preparation for changing jobs. So I bit the bullet and had the removalists pack my stuff.

At first unpacking was exciting. Rather like a domestic Easter Egg Hunt – you know what you’re going to get, it’s just a question of where the items turn up. But then it just became strange. There was the sofa – but no sofa legs. Perfectly understandable, removing the legs for transport; but where were they? Not in any of the boxes marked loungeroom. Nor the kitchen boxes.

In my search for the sofa legs, I opened a box marked ‘Linen’. No legs, and not even any linen. The box actually contained a Coca-cola crate, some darkroom processing equipment, and the vacuum cleaner head. (Other bits of the vacuum cleaner were in two further, separate boxes.) The removalists seem to have a thing about legs. I found the legs for the Ikea table/desk from the lounge room in a box marked ‘Main Bedroom’, one in each corner, and otherwise surrounded by towels - nowhere near the rest of the desk parts. The sofa legs are small, just 3-inch high blocks of wood, and so are easily hidden.

Everyone I’ve mentioned this odd arrangement to so far says the packers must have been “men”. But I am beginning to think they were “mischievous”, if not outright “malevolent”.

At various points in the past week, I’ve also met the strangers who are my new neighbours, who live in the three shoeboxes before mine. First there was Dan* in No.3, a 20-something wage slave who apologised for having his flatmate’s orange Datsun 120Y (with Cascade beer towel on dashboard) parked in my car parking space. He also apologised for having ‘borrowed’ my rubbish bin, but said that as it was presently full, I would be welcome to have it back after bin night (Tuesday).

I am glad I let Dan have the bin over the long weekend, as he and his flatmate held a 2-day party involving many visitors, doof music at high volume, cascades of beer and what smelled like funny cigarettes. Having attended and even perpetrated similar parties in my distant youth I was not keen to criticise. But by the second night, when one party-goer cranked up the sound system in his Nissan Riceburner with some heavy-duty dub outside my bedroom window at 2am, I hoped they might run out of steam soon. The piles of rubbish and boxes of bottles on Monday were mountainous. Dan apologised for these too.

Second was a pale fellow whose name I can’t remember, who lives in No.2 with his girlfriend. He was principally interested in the Volvo’s yellow number plate, thinking I might be an exile from Sydney like himself; he seemed bemused when I said I had moved down from Hat Town. At least he didn’t make a joke. He works for the state government in the health department.

On Tuesday afternoon I met Cassandra* who lives in No.1. She knocked on my front door, holding half a glass of chardonnay, to tell me that bin night was Tuesday night.

Fascinating lady; about my age, Cassandra is as skinny as a praying mantis (the rectangular specs and blonde bob enhance the illusion), and talks at a hundred miles an hour. In three minutes I learned: that she was an interior designer who was ‘taking a career break’ by working at a Telstra call centre; that she had moved from Sydney but originally hailed from New Zealand, where she grew up on a boat and travelled around all the time and was forever being sent off to boarding school; that she was ‘best friends’ with the girl who used to live in my shoebox, who has been studying neurosurgery for eight years and has taken a job in Melbourne for 26grand a year, wasn’t that scandalous; that she is also ‘best friends’ with the girl who lives at No.2, and that they met when she staggered around there with a bottle of chardonnay as a hello gift; did I have any friends yet, she’s been here a year and a half and locals tend to be a bit clicky; that the pale guy at No.2 had told her I worked for Auntie, was this true?; that Dan’s grey Persian, Albert, was a nuisance, regularly beating up her Siamese and getting into her rubbish, and that Dan probably neglected him; and had Dan stolen my rubbish bin, and what was with all that rubbish on his doorstep?

It was exhausting. After peering into my half unpacked lounge room, Cassandra made me promise I would come around for a drink some time soon, and whirled off.

Well, it’s Friday afternoon, and it’s suddenly looking VERY busy on the work front: it’s been announced that TasNarnia is going to the polls on March 18. That would be the day BaldRoss and I have flights for New Zealand, booked a year ago…

Speaking of flights, the Great White Schroeder cat arrives at the airport in 20 minutes, so I am heading off to pick her up.

I still haven’t found the sofa legs.

* all names changed to protect the guilty