The Afternoon tea club: 2014 #WATTYS2014

City People

City People

I have always felt a certain kinship and sympathy towards buskers, because I am one. I play my flute for spare change in our small country town on weekends. But city buskers are something else entirely. As I found out at Nat's birthday weekend.

Spending 99.9% of my time in the country, where half of the people you see are people you know, I always feel out of place in the city. There are just so many people and they're all going different directions and it's so loud and I can't sleep because it's never dark outside because the city never sleeps. I could never live in the city. But every time I make a trip into Sydney city, I feel like the tourist in my own country. And as all Sydney-goers know, you haven't been to markets till you've been to Paddy's. So I have never been to markets before, apparently.

Going to Paddy's markets was one of the planned activities for the weekend, and while the markets were Awesome with a capital W, it was what happened before we got there. On the way there, to be precise. Picture this:

The group of teenage girls is heading to the markets down the crowded streets of Sydney, near Chinatown. Nat and Annie, native city-dwellers, lead the way because they are actually able to find their way around this labyrinth. Shelly is receiving strange looks and the odd smirk from passers by as she glides around effortlessly on her wheelie shoes. Susan and Jade seem just as comfortable here as they do back home. And then there's me, desperately trying to adapt to being surrounded by this many people and all this noise when all of a sudden I hear something. Something other than the thousands of conversations and car noises.

It's music. A trumpet, actually. We stop at an intersection, waiting to cross the road and then on the street corner there is this busker. An old trumpeter, not rich by the looks of it. His trumpet is broken, being held together by rubber bands. Impressed by his music and feeling sorry for him, I take $2.70 from my wallet and drop it in his collection tray. There isn't much in there. All of a sudden he stops playing, lowers his trumpet and walks towards me.

“Thank you!” he says loudly in accented English. “Thank you very much!”

“Ummm, your welcome....” I reply awkwardly. I'm not a people person. I hoped he would just go back to playing, but no.

“Are you a musician? Are you?” He continues. Leave me alone...

“Yeah,” I say. “I am.”

He smiles, and he has a weird smile. “What do you play? What instrument?” He asks eagerly. Please just stop talking to me...

“Flute,” I reply, crossing my fingers that the little green man will appear on the traffic light any second now and save me.

He nods. “Okay, I play something special for you!” And he proceeds to play something right in front of me. It is pretty good, all these fast arpeggios.

And then the lights change, and I'm thinking THANK THE UNIVERSE, GOD, ALLAH, BUDDHA, SATAN, THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER, WHOEVER. ALL I CARE ABOUT IS THAT I'M FREE!

I awkwardly thank him as I walk away across the road. I kind of feel bad, because I think he was expecting me to stay and listen. But when I busk, I certainly don't randomly accost people I've never met. What is it with some people?

I don't like the city.