The Ryno Pen

Melina sang it.

Toowoomba lives it.

1974
or


present-day, the place seems to die like some kind of reverse (photophilic?) vampire when the sun gets behind West Street. Look ma, no people!

Oh, there’s the knuckle-draggers varying their McSludge intake with a bit of Other Franchise tucker on Margaret Street, but where’s the late-night cafe of yesteryear? Tell me again what happened to the newsagent that used to stay open late?

Regale me, o my Lovely Assistant, with the tale of the early days of our love, and how I tried to get us a decent feed after 8pm on a weeknight, only to have the staff start closing the joint, rapidly and with much jingling of cutlery, in case we wanted to be served according to the hours in the sign on the window.

(While yer at it, Lovely Girl, let’s not forget that place {now  closed, not surprisingly} where the night out was a mixture of Host’s apologies for Fuckups One through Twenty-Five and attempts to gross us out with tales of The Food Allergies That Nearly Killed Me/Mum/Wife/Greengrocer’s Cousin.)

Jings, no wonder I learned to cook better meals at home.

Back in the present day, the news is crawling again with the ol’ Sunday trading controversy (complete with dial-a-premium-number poll and no disclosure of the charges for doing so).

I won’t be wasting half-a-dollar or whatever it is on the poll, but I say no, and my reasons are twofold:

Firstly, it’s only going to benefit Colesworths; the smaller retailers just aren’t going to make anything extra. (Seriously, am I going to NOT buy a pool table, shoes, CD or computer parts locally just because I can’t get the blighters on Sunday? No, I’ll anticipate or wait till Monday.)

Secondly, it is painfully obvious from some of my recent retail experiences, that Toowoomba has already exhausted its supply of polite, competent retail staff, and has been forced to employ people from the didn’t-quite-make-the-cut pool, and even hire some of the really-won’t-do applicants. I know, because I have had the misfortune to be shopping when some of these dregs were rostered on.

(Note that in the above paragraph I did not use the term “served by”, or refer to these no-hopers as “working”, because I don’t think you’d get service or work out of them in a month of Sundays.)