Getting anywhere in this weather is unpleasant and it makes you want to get out of it as quickly as possible. Yet even in conditions like this, a swirling conurbation of four millions like Sydney is bound to have the odd nutter here or there and I found one at Blacktown station yesterday.
I got off the train and stepped into winds that would not seem out of place at Mawson Base and standing at the base of the stairs was a smallish chap with glasses, who was drinking a can of Spaghetti in the same way that one would drink a can of fizzy drink - no fork; no cutlery at all. This chap was drinking the can of Spaghetti in exactly the same manner as if he'd bought a can of Coca-Cola from a vending machine. Suffice to say, I was weirded out.
It takes something special to weird me out. I didn't think it was particularly strange when on a 43° day in Sheffield, I saw three guys in lawn chairs, sitting in a fountain. I didn't really think it odd when on one particular day as I was walker through Hyde Park in Sydney, I saw a lady taking a ferret for a walk on a leash. I am repulsed by the sight of blood and surgery on television (even though I once worked in an abattoir), I don't like looking at people getting injured on the sporting field and I think that they're possibly normal reactions (whatever normal is anyway) but the sight of a chap chugging a can of spaghetti was as if inside my brain, someone was shifting gears without the clutch. I just could not process it.
I really wanted to take a photograph of this but I thought that that would also be incredibly weird, that and it's just not nice to take someone's photograph without their permission. So the best that I could do was to stand about a bit on the platform (platforms are excellent for standing about on; I've done some of my best standing about on railway station platforms) and try not to watch as this chap drunk his can of spaghetti and see what what would happen. What did happen was entirely dull though, he drunk his can of spaghetti and left. The photograph which is decidedly less interesting than it otherwise could have been, is therefore just an empty and forlorn can, on a set of stairs.
You can get it lifting; you can get it shifting. You can get it waiting for a train.
A hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is Spag.
If you're pushing a cow, or showing them how. Matter a fact, I've got it now.
Spag Bol.*
When I got home and told Mrs Rollo about this and described this chap in detail, she explained that she had probably seen this exact same person, on a train; eating a can of baked beans with a fork. Who eats baked beans from the can on the train? Moreover, who eats cold baked beans from the can on a train? The probability of these two events occurring and involving the same person, is I think, greater than 50%. Otherwise, the explanation is that there are at least two of these nutters in the world.
Granted that I am eccentric and that probably I'm probably not the most qualified person in the world to comment on what is and isn't normal but even I know that there are times and places for things. I can't actually imagine what the proper time and place to drink a can of spaghetti would be but I'm pretty sure that it's not on one of the rainiest days of the year and on a railway station platform.
*I'm kind of sure that the Victoria Bitter song was based off of The Magnificent Seven Theme but I'm not sure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63i_Zx7Xb6o
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