Repeat

 

How pleasant buoyant gregarious is the announcement at South Melbourne light-rail stop of a morning. “Gidday passengers! My name is Emmanuel and I’m from the rolling stock department here at Yarra Trams. Welcome aboard your Route 96 service. Please remember to touch on, take a seat if available, and enjoy the ride.” Readers look up. Students lift an eyelid. Parents with children cease their squabble. It could be the first morning of the world, the voice charming boyish laidback, his sinuous sentences singing to the inner ear a message of happy day. Passengers relax. Then as if in answer to a call, as happily dappled sunlight flickers through the tree-lined cutting, we hear him again, nearing Albert Park light-rail stop. “Gidday passengers! My name is Emmanuel and I’m from the rolling stock department here at Yarra Trams. Welcome aboard your Route 96 service. Please remember to touch on, take a seat if available, and enjoy the ride.” Well isn’t that nice, double Emmanuel, welcome aboard, like listening to a favourite hit song. Our favourable feelings about the rolling stock department and touching on are given an extra push. Still, it must be observed, feelings change over time, when for example the song remains the same, as we find the same loop playing every day of the week at South Melbourne light-rail stop, with a repeat as we approach the flowery gabled graffitied light-rail stop of Albert Park. “Gidday passengers! My name is Emmanuel and I’m from the rolling stock department here at Yarra Trams. Welcome aboard your Route 96 service. Please remember to touch on, take a seat if available, and enjoy the ride.” Eighteen months of our favourite hit each morning tends to alter our relationship to Emmanuel in subtle unwelcome ways. I have nothing against Emmanuel personally. He had a job to do, he did it, he did it well. I don’t even mind the voice as such. It has become a sound that means we are now in South Melbourne. Now if I want a message, I prefer Cheryl from the Network. Cheryl’s garbled announcements about journey delays, wearing masks, and weekend trackwork, interspersed with static, conclude with the scripted wish to have a great day everybody before the Network cuts in with beep beep beep. I suppose one day I’ll miss “Gidday passengers! My name is Emmanuel and I’m from the rolling stock department here at Yarra Trams. Welcome aboard your Route 96 service. Please remember to touch on, take a seat if available, and enjoy the ride,” but not just yet. I wish Emmanuel could vary the message. I imagine St Kilda crazies breaking into a karaoke of “Gidday passengers! My name is Emmanuel …” but they remain slumped and inert in corners of the carriage. Emmanuel is stuck on rotation, repeat, in a rut. It’s my stop next so it’s time to bid seeyalater, till tomorrow in South Melbourne.