Red

“Pretty little things, necessary things …” In autumn going on winter the colours have fallen out of the branches so, going walking, the moments that are not grey-white sky or black-brown roads, are sharp. Bottle-brushes and rosehip bubbles swing before the terraces. The long side brick walls of old warehouses stretch in the sun. Everything looks understated, even unstated, but we know soon enough where the sprinkler stop valves and fire alarms can be found. The octagonal sign on St George’s Road corner effects every tail light. The colour that forbids and the colour that attracts most furiously. No Dogs. Hazchem. I continue past the skate boys as they zip down the concrete troughs in their cherry baggies. A Bombers supporter jogs through Edinburgh Gardens at a diagonal: what a hangover, his eyes look like bloodbaths. Features show out like flute parts in a symphony. I continue up the hill. There is melancholy around the lips of the moon on the corner of Rowe and Delbridge – its eyebrows flare. Now that the Ferraris and Pajeros have stamped Fitzroy they will say the Communists have gone for good. Revolutionary posters have moved into the past. Poppies on Aussie Soy boxes in Sustenance’s window. And the newsagents are freckled with attention-getting devices. A third of our life is spent sleeping  and a sixteenth standing on corners looking at a cut-out man in a little black box. I continue past the P for Post Office and the sale flag at Autorange and the Ps for Probationary. Discarded Winfield packets and MacDonalds cups are blown flat against the swimming pool fence. There is new paint on the station windows: out with the old. The underground tunnel is sprayed with rubrics: Skins Rule, STM, Callum Sux Shit, I Love Jesus Christ – True, Cunt, Pigs, Crofty 88, Magpies 91: I wonder what it will be next week. And so up and so out into Spensley Street. We live in moderate cool climes: colours soon go russet, they go by another shade. Link Clifton Pharmacy, Martin Meats: the words are faded and understated. A nose is strapped to a rusted Belmont. A street of houses with a sprinkle of cold geraniums. A carless lot emblazoned at its end with Sidchrome Metal Box Division. Fenwick corner demolition site with painted sign: Free Fire Wood. Around the corner into Dwyer, past Coke cans rolling down the camber near kids’ crossing stripes. An owl and a potoroo ask for No Junk Mail Please. I knock on the door then enter, stepping over doona covers and towels into the chaotic interior. To a glass of claret, heavy and shaped like a tulip.  

from Colour Supplement, early 1990s