a dick heâd been. Hay-fever Terrace.
He thinks: landscape without pollens? Which pollens? He is clearly not suffering the affliction. He floats as all the others drown.
This is one menial contract with follow-up work. So the problem has passed from bad to worse to a lesser state, forgotten about by the strata manager, as the weather cools and the soil gets a few downpours to calm things down. His off-sider Jen is the perfect relief-worker in this. She delivers, in equal parts, enthusiasm both for her work and for cheerful people-watching. This is something outdoor labouring in public delivers in spades, and which you take as pleasure, even payback, for the mindless staring and sometimes sneering you collect by working in front of complete strangers. They are working on the first terrace, above street level and below the apartment windows. He has driven his ute up onto the pavement and parked it below the terrace so as they dig up the offending plants they can hurl them down into the back of the ute. It is half full of soil and sods.
Hayfever, eh? So you still have a bit to learn about plants? she taunts. Even a man of your experience.
Huh. Bloody landscape architects are worse. They are ignorant about plants. I shit on them.They still get all the best jobs.
How come they donât know?
He thumps another shovel-full down onto the ute. How satisfying.
Yeah, funny isnât it. I thought they learnt horticulture. The people who hire them think they learnt horticulture. But they havenât. Theyâre more âurban spacesâ, where the benches go in those windy bloody squares outside new high-rise office blocks. Thatâs what they are: steel bench people.
You work for them, but? Wasnât the big pond job one of theirs?
The big pond job? I like that.
Eh?
I have spent years on that bloody job, Jen. Lakes. When they cost that much â you call em lakes! That smaller job you call hips and ponds, fine, but not my precious Lakes.
They dig and toss the sods and tussocks and the grassy mess over the wall into the ute, working their way further along the garden and away from the vehicle. Jen climbs back up after driving the ute into position.
Iâve been lucky, Angus says. Shires only contract jobs to qualified landscape architects, who then sub-contract the work to geniuses like me. Iâm better at rocks and water than plants, but I can do plants.
Odds and sods, mate.
Jen is good to work with. Planting these pesky grasses and spreading the soil had been heavy and skin-worrying work, which Angus and Jen stood away from frequently.
Over time they have noticed â hard not to â the strangely lurching blokes walking up this street; and the gay couple who strode in matching shaved heads with skulls of matching shape and matching clothes and matching shades, and even matching dogs; and the funny Chinese man who jogs up the street and back several times in steps of no more than half a metre, his jogging only slightly faster than jumping up and down. That lurching walk, Jen told him, the ones the lanky blokes do, is called the boob walk. No, nothing to do with girls, itâs the walk they do inside.
You mean crims?
Yep. These blokes are showing off, itâs badge of honour stuff.
Jen is used to engaging with crowds from her two-day a week job at the Zoo. Large numbers of people visiting all year round, people asking questions. She has a strong, almost man-youth figure with straight shoulders and a strong torso, which gives her what the yoga practitioners and the racing drivers call good core-strength.
She has a curiosity about the body and perhaps because many women assume she is lesbian she is sympathetic to the variety of anomalous body and gender types in the city.
Not like this in the country, she assures Angus. You just never see any of these city types in the bush.
None that she could call to mind anyway. Some rather effeminate men in towns would be all, and the more usual
He thinks: landscape without pollens? Which pollens? He is clearly not suffering the affliction. He floats as all the others drown.
This is one menial contract with follow-up work. So the problem has passed from bad to worse to a lesser state, forgotten about by the strata manager, as the weather cools and the soil gets a few downpours to calm things down. His off-sider Jen is the perfect relief-worker in this. She delivers, in equal parts, enthusiasm both for her work and for cheerful people-watching. This is something outdoor labouring in public delivers in spades, and which you take as pleasure, even payback, for the mindless staring and sometimes sneering you collect by working in front of complete strangers. They are working on the first terrace, above street level and below the apartment windows. He has driven his ute up onto the pavement and parked it below the terrace so as they dig up the offending plants they can hurl them down into the back of the ute. It is half full of soil and sods.
Hayfever, eh? So you still have a bit to learn about plants? she taunts. Even a man of your experience.
Huh. Bloody landscape architects are worse. They are ignorant about plants. I shit on them.They still get all the best jobs.
How come they donât know?
He thumps another shovel-full down onto the ute. How satisfying.
Yeah, funny isnât it. I thought they learnt horticulture. The people who hire them think they learnt horticulture. But they havenât. Theyâre more âurban spacesâ, where the benches go in those windy bloody squares outside new high-rise office blocks. Thatâs what they are: steel bench people.
You work for them, but? Wasnât the big pond job one of theirs?
The big pond job? I like that.
Eh?
I have spent years on that bloody job, Jen. Lakes. When they cost that much â you call em lakes! That smaller job you call hips and ponds, fine, but not my precious Lakes.
They dig and toss the sods and tussocks and the grassy mess over the wall into the ute, working their way further along the garden and away from the vehicle. Jen climbs back up after driving the ute into position.
Iâve been lucky, Angus says. Shires only contract jobs to qualified landscape architects, who then sub-contract the work to geniuses like me. Iâm better at rocks and water than plants, but I can do plants.
Odds and sods, mate.
Jen is good to work with. Planting these pesky grasses and spreading the soil had been heavy and skin-worrying work, which Angus and Jen stood away from frequently.
Over time they have noticed â hard not to â the strangely lurching blokes walking up this street; and the gay couple who strode in matching shaved heads with skulls of matching shape and matching clothes and matching shades, and even matching dogs; and the funny Chinese man who jogs up the street and back several times in steps of no more than half a metre, his jogging only slightly faster than jumping up and down. That lurching walk, Jen told him, the ones the lanky blokes do, is called the boob walk. No, nothing to do with girls, itâs the walk they do inside.
You mean crims?
Yep. These blokes are showing off, itâs badge of honour stuff.
Jen is used to engaging with crowds from her two-day a week job at the Zoo. Large numbers of people visiting all year round, people asking questions. She has a strong, almost man-youth figure with straight shoulders and a strong torso, which gives her what the yoga practitioners and the racing drivers call good core-strength.
She has a curiosity about the body and perhaps because many women assume she is lesbian she is sympathetic to the variety of anomalous body and gender types in the city.
Not like this in the country, she assures Angus. You just never see any of these city types in the bush.
None that she could call to mind anyway. Some rather effeminate men in towns would be all, and the more usual
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