Jane Routley's Blog, page 5
October 26, 2015
Virtual Fantasycon Nov 1- 8
Next Wednesday I'll be on Facebook on the 4th of November Epic Fantasy Day which is one of the eight mighty days of the first Virtual Fantasycon.
I hope to be giving away some terrific ebooks aside from my own and also some Amazon vouchers.
So come one come all. Pop in. Leave a comment and enter a giveaway.
https://www.facebook.com/events/10424...
I hope to be giving away some terrific ebooks aside from my own and also some Amazon vouchers.
So come one come all. Pop in. Leave a comment and enter a giveaway.
https://www.facebook.com/events/10424...
October 19, 2015
Unicycle hockey
Station Stories Unicycle Hockey
Working at zoo station this week and fell into conversation with a retired man who is working at introducing unicycle hockey to the local primary school. Yes it’s true! People do play hockey on unicycles!!! www://hockey.unicycling.org.au/
I’ve recently read A Time of Gifts -a travel book by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He’d played bicycle polo in Hungary before the war. I’d thought it was just the lost frivolity of a decadent upper-crust but my retired man says there is still a bicycle polo club in Melbourne, although these days you provide you own bike and they have trouble finding place to play.
After last week’s grim post, it’s nice to be reminded that the world can also be a delightful place.
Working at zoo station this week and fell into conversation with a retired man who is working at introducing unicycle hockey to the local primary school. Yes it’s true! People do play hockey on unicycles!!! www://hockey.unicycling.org.au/
I’ve recently read A Time of Gifts -a travel book by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He’d played bicycle polo in Hungary before the war. I’d thought it was just the lost frivolity of a decadent upper-crust but my retired man says there is still a bicycle polo club in Melbourne, although these days you provide you own bike and they have trouble finding place to play.
After last week’s grim post, it’s nice to be reminded that the world can also be a delightful place.
October 10, 2015
Self Harm - A station story for Mental Health Week (trigger warning)
On the railways we see quite a few people with mental health issues one way or another. Anyone who does customer service with the public is bound to. When I’m cooking BBQ for the other staff at the show, I get a chance to catch up on the news from round our region and this year we somehow got to talking about mental health issues. In particular three women – B—A -- and H -- who regularly appear at railway stations and threaten self harm (code word for jumping under a train) Everyone has a story of dragging these ladies off the tracks, restraining them, or handcuffing them to a rail until the police and social workers come.
The most famous of these is B. I never met her, but I suspect she was the subject of the regular weekly SMS you used to see on the system. <>
One of my current workmates knew her as a child and says she was a nice kid but that the family was seriously dysfunctional.
For a long time the rumor has been floating round that B finally went under a train and is dead, but at the show one of the ticket inspectors said he’d seen her all cleaned up and with a little girl on some kind of access visit. I hoped this was true but on the last night of the show another ticket inspector told me he’d seen the report. B was dead. She’d slipped and fallen while standing on a bridge parapet threatening to jump. Sad and particularly so for the daughter.
I’ve described A-- in a previous post. She’s an overweight woman in her late twenties who sometimes visits the junction when I was at the barriers. She is often wearing a wrist band and usually she has a bandage on some injury or other.
She sits and smokes and tells you hair raising stories of how she took 7 sleeping pills on a country train and had to be put off and how she gets scary voices and how she likes to torment the security guards who all hate her and are out to get her anyway. She tells all these stories in a jolly voice as one would tell a joke. At first her weird narcissistic need to impress scared me. 4 hours of it can be pretty overwhelming. Then a workmate told me that whenever it gets too much, say “the boss is getting angry with me for chatting and I have to stop now.” Oddly enough A respects this and takes herself off.
Now I have an escape hatch I find I can talk to A-- ok, especially since one of the security guards told me she loves cats. So I do my best to get her onto the subject of cats. But what I really want to ask her is “why??” Why do this? Surely there must be more satisfying ways to spend the short life you have. Maybe the right words at the right time might put her back on track.
But it doesn’t work like that. Her eyes gleam with mania as she tells her stories. I suspect she has little else in her life. Logic doesn’t apply here.
The third self harmer H-- I know quite well. For a while she was attending the youth mental health service near my station and one day I found and held her wallet for her until she came back.
She’s a solid sort of girl in her early teens, the sort of fierce gallant girl who would be good at rugby or roller derby, someone who might be a bully or a protector against bullies. I’ve seen her acting like an idiot on the train surrounded by a handful of slightly sneering school fellows going “Oh that’s just H--”. She used to sit sometimes on the edge of the platform with her legs over the edge and I’d tell her she was worrying me but leave it at that. One time she’d clearly had a bad day because she stood on the side of the platform with her toes sticking out over the edge just staring fiercely down onto the tracks. When the train came she just kept standing there. It managed to stop about three metres from her and the driver sat there looking worried. Stalemate!
So I went over and put my arm round her and coaxed her away from the edge and stood between her and the train until it came in. She got on and was taken away and I didn’t think anything more of it. Just adolescent hijinks. Getting a thrill out of stopping a train.
Last time I saw her she told me she’d moved away and wasn’t travelling on that line anymore, which I took to be a good result.
But was it? While working at the show, a ticket inspector tells me he’s seen three security guards try to stop H-- jumping on the tracks and that she’s just as bad as the other two. He talks of mace. I so hope he’s got the wrong person or that his information is out of date. She’d seemed so much quieter and more confident the last time I’d seen her.
Everything I’ve seen H-- do, seems like just adolescent attention seeking behavior. But has it gone toxic – turned into as mental health issue - as it has in A-- and B--? Will it take over and maybe take her life?
The most famous of these is B. I never met her, but I suspect she was the subject of the regular weekly SMS you used to see on the system. <>
One of my current workmates knew her as a child and says she was a nice kid but that the family was seriously dysfunctional.
For a long time the rumor has been floating round that B finally went under a train and is dead, but at the show one of the ticket inspectors said he’d seen her all cleaned up and with a little girl on some kind of access visit. I hoped this was true but on the last night of the show another ticket inspector told me he’d seen the report. B was dead. She’d slipped and fallen while standing on a bridge parapet threatening to jump. Sad and particularly so for the daughter.
I’ve described A-- in a previous post. She’s an overweight woman in her late twenties who sometimes visits the junction when I was at the barriers. She is often wearing a wrist band and usually she has a bandage on some injury or other.
She sits and smokes and tells you hair raising stories of how she took 7 sleeping pills on a country train and had to be put off and how she gets scary voices and how she likes to torment the security guards who all hate her and are out to get her anyway. She tells all these stories in a jolly voice as one would tell a joke. At first her weird narcissistic need to impress scared me. 4 hours of it can be pretty overwhelming. Then a workmate told me that whenever it gets too much, say “the boss is getting angry with me for chatting and I have to stop now.” Oddly enough A respects this and takes herself off.
Now I have an escape hatch I find I can talk to A-- ok, especially since one of the security guards told me she loves cats. So I do my best to get her onto the subject of cats. But what I really want to ask her is “why??” Why do this? Surely there must be more satisfying ways to spend the short life you have. Maybe the right words at the right time might put her back on track.
But it doesn’t work like that. Her eyes gleam with mania as she tells her stories. I suspect she has little else in her life. Logic doesn’t apply here.
The third self harmer H-- I know quite well. For a while she was attending the youth mental health service near my station and one day I found and held her wallet for her until she came back.
She’s a solid sort of girl in her early teens, the sort of fierce gallant girl who would be good at rugby or roller derby, someone who might be a bully or a protector against bullies. I’ve seen her acting like an idiot on the train surrounded by a handful of slightly sneering school fellows going “Oh that’s just H--”. She used to sit sometimes on the edge of the platform with her legs over the edge and I’d tell her she was worrying me but leave it at that. One time she’d clearly had a bad day because she stood on the side of the platform with her toes sticking out over the edge just staring fiercely down onto the tracks. When the train came she just kept standing there. It managed to stop about three metres from her and the driver sat there looking worried. Stalemate!
So I went over and put my arm round her and coaxed her away from the edge and stood between her and the train until it came in. She got on and was taken away and I didn’t think anything more of it. Just adolescent hijinks. Getting a thrill out of stopping a train.
Last time I saw her she told me she’d moved away and wasn’t travelling on that line anymore, which I took to be a good result.
But was it? While working at the show, a ticket inspector tells me he’s seen three security guards try to stop H-- jumping on the tracks and that she’s just as bad as the other two. He talks of mace. I so hope he’s got the wrong person or that his information is out of date. She’d seemed so much quieter and more confident the last time I’d seen her.
Everything I’ve seen H-- do, seems like just adolescent attention seeking behavior. But has it gone toxic – turned into as mental health issue - as it has in A-- and B--? Will it take over and maybe take her life?
October 1, 2015
A most gratifying rainstorm
During a recent rain storm, an assortment of passing cyclists were taking shelter in the waiting room with the rest of us huddled masses. One of the cyclists approached me.
“Are you the lady who writes the blog,” she asked.
I was delighted to think someone was reading me and admitted to the crime.
Thus I met Larissa MacFarlane Printmaker extraordinaire. I took a look at her website which is at http://larissamacfarlane.blogspot.com...
and fell totally in love with this wonderful print of the train line near the junction station where it goes under the freeway and over the river. You can cycle or walk through I and it has strange noisily silent “special” atmosphere, kind of like a modern temple to the Gods of progress or business. I think Larissa has captured it perfectly.
“Are you the lady who writes the blog,” she asked.
I was delighted to think someone was reading me and admitted to the crime.
Thus I met Larissa MacFarlane Printmaker extraordinaire. I took a look at her website which is at http://larissamacfarlane.blogspot.com...
and fell totally in love with this wonderful print of the train line near the junction station where it goes under the freeway and over the river. You can cycle or walk through I and it has strange noisily silent “special” atmosphere, kind of like a modern temple to the Gods of progress or business. I think Larissa has captured it perfectly.
September 17, 2015
Skateboards for Giant Tortoises
Skateboards for Giant Tortoises
Posted on September 18, 2015
When I arrived yesterday I was a bit concerned to find the meal room door open but it turned out two work men had taken refuge there while waiting for some glue to dry. Currently they are installing a huge screen in my station so that they can track, of all things, the movement of the nearby TRAMS!!! Very Utopia! (I mean the Rob Sitch TV show,not the St Thomas More book) I should add that the station has no screen for showing when the trains come so that should be quite confusing for the passengers.
I always chat to workmen and offer them cups of tea. These two turned out to be very nice chaps, horribly bored which meant they very kindly helped me put in some nails to hang things from, made me some very nice labels for my keys and listened with great sympathy to my woeful tale of being robbed two weeks ago.
Later in the day I was chatting to another workman from the zoo. This guy was an engineer and he showed me pictures of his latest project – building a skateboard for one of the giant tortoises who had become paralyzed in two legs.
The worlds a terrible place – any newscast will tell you that – but there is still something wonderful about a life in which someone had a job building skateboards for elderly tortoises.
p.s. there are lots of pictures on the net of little tortoises skateboarding. I wonder how they enjoy the speed.
Posted on September 18, 2015
When I arrived yesterday I was a bit concerned to find the meal room door open but it turned out two work men had taken refuge there while waiting for some glue to dry. Currently they are installing a huge screen in my station so that they can track, of all things, the movement of the nearby TRAMS!!! Very Utopia! (I mean the Rob Sitch TV show,not the St Thomas More book) I should add that the station has no screen for showing when the trains come so that should be quite confusing for the passengers.
I always chat to workmen and offer them cups of tea. These two turned out to be very nice chaps, horribly bored which meant they very kindly helped me put in some nails to hang things from, made me some very nice labels for my keys and listened with great sympathy to my woeful tale of being robbed two weeks ago.
Later in the day I was chatting to another workman from the zoo. This guy was an engineer and he showed me pictures of his latest project – building a skateboard for one of the giant tortoises who had become paralyzed in two legs.
The worlds a terrible place – any newscast will tell you that – but there is still something wonderful about a life in which someone had a job building skateboards for elderly tortoises.
p.s. there are lots of pictures on the net of little tortoises skateboarding. I wonder how they enjoy the speed.
September 1, 2015
A question of Keys : a bit of excitement at the station
Now the renovation of my office is finished, I’m allowed to go back to Zoo station. I was looking forward to enjoying my freshly painted new office. So you can imagine my disappointment when lo and behold, I opened my new meal room door, to be confronted with
Graffiti!! My God it gets everywhere. And why can’t they paint something interesting.
But inside the office!! Did it slide in under the door?
I assumed that some kids had got in while the workmen were there and that there was nothing to worry about. I started using the cosy little meal room as my office and leaving my overcoat, my uniform jacket and safety vest there in the evenings.
Until Thursday when I opened up the office door and discovered my clothes and the fire extinguisher were no longer there. I’d been robbed and by someone who’d painted a smiley face on the door. (Make a defiant gesture at me, why don’t you?)
Oddly the microwave and the other electrical appliances where untouched. At first I couldn’t believe what had happened. I thought maybe my aged brain had forgotten where I had put the coat or that a work mate was playing a trick on me. I looked inside the fridge and the microwave and everywhere else.
Why steal my uniform? When they came, the police told me that Metro uniform is the outfit of choice for graffiti artists loitering around rail yards hoping to tag trains. I was oddly comforted to think of my clothes leading this outlaw life instead of just being dropped in some dumpster.
The meal room is separate from the office and low security with no alarm. It can be accessed by a key that’s easy to copy. All sorts of maintenance crew have these keys so that they can use the toilets next door. Apparently other less savory people have keys too.
The strangest part of the whole story was that my overcoat turned up again. A kindly passing golfer picked it up on the golf course and brought it back. It was so wet with rain it took two days to dry out.
I wish the suit jacket had turned up. The old one was very flattering to my figure. The new one just makes me look dumpy. (yes I am that shallow )
Graffiti!! My God it gets everywhere. And why can’t they paint something interesting.
But inside the office!! Did it slide in under the door?
I assumed that some kids had got in while the workmen were there and that there was nothing to worry about. I started using the cosy little meal room as my office and leaving my overcoat, my uniform jacket and safety vest there in the evenings.
Until Thursday when I opened up the office door and discovered my clothes and the fire extinguisher were no longer there. I’d been robbed and by someone who’d painted a smiley face on the door. (Make a defiant gesture at me, why don’t you?)
Oddly the microwave and the other electrical appliances where untouched. At first I couldn’t believe what had happened. I thought maybe my aged brain had forgotten where I had put the coat or that a work mate was playing a trick on me. I looked inside the fridge and the microwave and everywhere else.
Why steal my uniform? When they came, the police told me that Metro uniform is the outfit of choice for graffiti artists loitering around rail yards hoping to tag trains. I was oddly comforted to think of my clothes leading this outlaw life instead of just being dropped in some dumpster.
The meal room is separate from the office and low security with no alarm. It can be accessed by a key that’s easy to copy. All sorts of maintenance crew have these keys so that they can use the toilets next door. Apparently other less savory people have keys too.
The strangest part of the whole story was that my overcoat turned up again. A kindly passing golfer picked it up on the golf course and brought it back. It was so wet with rain it took two days to dry out.
I wish the suit jacket had turned up. The old one was very flattering to my figure. The new one just makes me look dumpy. (yes I am that shallow )
August 1, 2015
A long way from home
Every year in August I try to escape from Melbourne winter and go somewhere warm. Last year we went to 3700 kilometres away to Darwin. You can’t get much further away.
I was poking around in a plant nursery just down the road from our caravan park when I discovered Tah Dah !!!!
– A Melbourne train carriage!! (for those gunzels among you it was Hitachi carriage no. 1971T)
I was poking around in a plant nursery just down the road from our caravan park when I discovered Tah Dah !!!!
– A Melbourne train carriage!! (for those gunzels among you it was Hitachi carriage no. 1971T)
July 26, 2015
Confessions of a marshmallow heart
I have done an unwise thing. On a day when it was only 10 degrees, Ms A. showed up at the station barefoot looking very cold and sad after being discharged from hospital. She burst into tears because she claimed not to have the fare back to her home in the country and even though I didn’t believe her, I was overwhelmed by pity and bought her a hot chocolate. Why unwise?
Well A. is a serial and serious pest who shows up at stations all over the system and threatens to jump under the trains. You have to take these threats seriously the way you have to take bomb threats seriously so there’s always the police and the pso’s and the ambulance and hospital. Lots of drama.
She seemed pretty ok that day though so maybe they’d given her something in the hospital to calm her down. In the end after a cigarette (somehow broke people always have money for cigarettes, don’t they?) she very docilely got on the train to go to Traveller’s Aid at one of the central stations. Traveller's Aid lend people small sums of money for tickets home.
Later when the police came by on patrol, I told them I’d seen A. and where she’d gone and they went off to check on what she was up to. As it happened this was the patrol that had arrested her at our station the previous night for threatening to jump under a train.
Well I can only hope that she prefers negative attention and that my giving her a hot chocolate and talking to her nicely will not have the same effect as giving food to a stray cat. It’s all very well to complement me for being charitable but really she's not someone who should be encouraged to hang around at a station. I fear my Station Master will have cause to curse me.
Well A. is a serial and serious pest who shows up at stations all over the system and threatens to jump under the trains. You have to take these threats seriously the way you have to take bomb threats seriously so there’s always the police and the pso’s and the ambulance and hospital. Lots of drama.
She seemed pretty ok that day though so maybe they’d given her something in the hospital to calm her down. In the end after a cigarette (somehow broke people always have money for cigarettes, don’t they?) she very docilely got on the train to go to Traveller’s Aid at one of the central stations. Traveller's Aid lend people small sums of money for tickets home.
Later when the police came by on patrol, I told them I’d seen A. and where she’d gone and they went off to check on what she was up to. As it happened this was the patrol that had arrested her at our station the previous night for threatening to jump under a train.
Well I can only hope that she prefers negative attention and that my giving her a hot chocolate and talking to her nicely will not have the same effect as giving food to a stray cat. It’s all very well to complement me for being charitable but really she's not someone who should be encouraged to hang around at a station. I fear my Station Master will have cause to curse me.
July 19, 2015
Is this a definition of innocence?
Was startled by the clothes of a young African man I saw this week. He was wearing his Michael Jackson “Beat it” outfit – colorful jacket and skinny jeans. On his belt was a huge buckle depicting the silhouette of a curvaceous young lady against the background of a confederate flag. I guess the confederate flag just doesn’t have much meaning for 16 year olds from Sudan.
July 12, 2015
The Green Cheek Conure
The Green Cheek Conure.
Saw a delightful thing on the way home. A handsome youth in the train had a little parrot, a Green Cheeked Conure, sitting on his shoulder. The bird got tired of being ignored and started pulling his ear buds and the young man took it in his hand and scratched its head and tummy till it was completely blissed out. I couldn’t help admiring the deft way he handled this fragile little creature.
When the train stopped at the station, he put the bird on his finger and held it out the door where it obediently dropped a little poop on the platform. Then he brought it back into the carriage and sat it on his shoulder again. I was so impressed and so is everyone I’ve told about this. How on earth did he train a bird to do that? Unfortunately during the whole exercise he avoided any eye contact so I didn’t get the chance to ask.
Saw a delightful thing on the way home. A handsome youth in the train had a little parrot, a Green Cheeked Conure, sitting on his shoulder. The bird got tired of being ignored and started pulling his ear buds and the young man took it in his hand and scratched its head and tummy till it was completely blissed out. I couldn’t help admiring the deft way he handled this fragile little creature.
When the train stopped at the station, he put the bird on his finger and held it out the door where it obediently dropped a little poop on the platform. Then he brought it back into the carriage and sat it on his shoulder again. I was so impressed and so is everyone I’ve told about this. How on earth did he train a bird to do that? Unfortunately during the whole exercise he avoided any eye contact so I didn’t get the chance to ask.
