Melbourne miniatures: No. 1

I just found the exercise book containing the scribbles I made during a holiday in Melbourne in June; so, here's my first word-picture from that trip.

It's 6:40 am and about 9 degrees outside. I'm sitting at a bench inside Macca's looking out at Elizabeth Street; drunk people are returning home from who-knows-where. The combination of these happy drunks (several wave and wish me well), the four doughnuts I've just downed, and, to someone of my generation, comfort music such as the Eurythmics, Here Comes the Rain, Huey Lewis and the News, Hip to Be Square, and U2, The Sweetest Thing, are buoying me -- at least for the moment.

Now, here's a surprise: just within my view, runners, seriously dressed runners (read: lycra, short-shorts, singlets, garish colours), have started started streaming down Flinders Street. Given the temperature, seriously under-dressed is perhaps a more apt description. Nevertheless, here they are, just after sparrow's fart on a cold Sunday morning, running! I hastily leave Macca's to investigate.

"It's 'Run Melbourne'," I'm told by a lime-green-vest-wearing official. I cheer a couple of runners, to feel like I'm part of the action. As I later discovered, Run Melbourne is community charity event in which people run and donate money -- over and above their entry fee, which, from $40 to $70 depending on whether you run 5 km through to a half-marathon, is not to be sneezed at -- to a charity of their choice. Some people actively fundraise for their chosen charity: one bloke raised over $8,000! (My wife, who thinks running for fun is the height of stupidity, would utterly scoff at the idea of running long distances and paying to do so and giving money to a charity for the privilege! "Write a cheque to the charity, pocket the entry fee -- or, better still, donate it to the charity too -- and stay at home with a cup of tea and a crumpet," she'd say. She's got a point.)

Photo: Justin McManus,
http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2008/06/22/1214073033685.html

Here's an excerpt from a report about Run Melbourne in The Age (23 June, 2008):

One first-timer, pharmacist Siew Dooley, 40, of Kew, said the atmosphere was very friendly. "We were all suffering together," she said. "We were all wet and cold and miserable, and that provided a sort of camaraderie."

A touch of levity was provided by one runner dressed as the Riddler, the Batman character, who jogged in a purple wig and a green outfit with question marks.

One half-marathon runner dispensed with clothes altogether, running naked except for running shoes. [Yee-ha!]

The man reached the half-way mark in the marathon before police stepped in, because, they said, "he was actually a good runner, and it was hard to pinpoint where he was". But they did, and arrested him.

I wonder which charity nudie-rudie runner donated to. Given the weather, the frost-bite recovery centre would've been appropriate.