Rocketfuelled
Reuben Whitehouse

Elwood 27.06.08

I sat on my balcony this morning, eating a Sloppy Omelette, watching the various people leave home and head to work in the city. We live at the front of a block of flats which appears to go back for about half a mile and, sitting up at the front of our place at 8:30am, you’re at the head of a steady stream of people going past you on either side, emerging from the units back behind ours.

For the first time, I noticed the types of vehicles which were coming out of the car park gates: Mercedes SLK’s, Porsches, Various two-seater Japanese sports cars, Big BMW’s, that sort of thing. Bored-looking people smartly dressed carrying out their routine to a ‘t’. Body-coloured bumpers. Pulling out of the flats and over-revving those high-end engines before slamming on the brakes for the intersection.

I felt kinda out of place with my crappy jeans and wayward hair, splattering sloppy egg and tomatoes all over the balcony. It didn’t feel good. Never have I lived in a neighbourhood where the average person’s car is worth more than a couple of week’s wages. Paranoia set in.

A man and a woman speed-walked past in some pretty damn smart looking gym-wear, talking at high volume and waving their floppy wrists around their faces as they did so.

Shit, I live in tinsel town. I live in comfy, spongy, watered-down town.

Then my neighbour from two floors up spilled out of the door with his youngest. Wearing un-matching, baggy tracksuit top and bottoms, he was also, as usual, wearing his totally 80’s radio headphones over a blue baseball cap. Complete with shaggy beard, permanent grimace and big white trainers, he looks like a grumpy cartoon character. He bumbled down the steps whilst his tiny daughter ran circles around his legs, clutching her huge bright pink Barbie-branded bag and gibbering away. They made a couple of rapid exchanges as he checked his mail before putting it all back into the letter box. They jumped into his old Falcon Sedan with the huge roofbox on the top and the handmade ‘For Sale’ signs in the window which have been there for 9 months and, after adjusting the stereo but not removing his headphones, pulled out and cut-up a big shiny sedan as he did so, forcing the driver to grind to a halt. Off they trundled down the road at slow pace.

Suddenly everything felt okay again. Balanced. Not completely alone. Like we can live here, scruffy and hungover, without fear of being voted out by the suited masses.