What would you use a road sweeper for?

It is now officially spring in Sydney and when sunny it is absolutely fabulous, with leaves and blossom coming out and early morning blasts of fragrance from jasmines and wisteria. We have a star magnolia outside our bedroom window that produces flowers of such pink tinged beauty that I find myself completely distracted midway through making the bed in the mornings – (to be fair it actually doesn’t take much to distract me from this kind of task).

There is a large London plane tree outside our front garden that at this time of year attracts groups of jewel coloured parakeets swinging crazily from its branches whilst trying to get at the new leaves, when disturbed they zip across the sky like mini fighter jets. The plane tree whilst majestic and graceful is actually a major pain as its roots are desperate to make their way inside the house. When we redid the front garden we had to relay the front steps and the verandah tiles as a tree root had shifted them up three inches. When I say the offending root was as big as one of my thighs you get an idea of the magnitude of the arboreal invader. Which brings me to good news on the thunder thighs account. I have just heard on the radio a report from a Danish study that suggests having thighs with a circumference of over 60 cm is a good thing from the long-term health point of view. I haven’t actually whipped out a tape measure but I can quite happily predict which side of the thigh tide line I am going to be.

I was in the car following a council road sweeper on the way home yesterday and noticed that it had a big ‘For Hire” sign painted on the back, together with phone number. I was absolutely riveted as I couldn’t imagine who in their right mind hires a road sweeper the size of a tanker. I came to the conclusion that if I lived in a very smart large house with an avenue, and we’re talking a Brideshead Revisited scale house here, I might want the avenue swept. Alternatively if I become house proud in the extreme I might hire the thing to sweep my little bit of street, however given both of these scenarios are up there with winning the lottery in terms of possibility I didn’t bother writing the number down.

Whilst pondering the hundred and one uses of a road sweeper I was listening to the radio and heard Dire Straits playing “Money for Nothing” and was immediately transported back to the days after my final university exams. It is amazing how evocative a piece of music can be, I can so clearly remember driving out to a pub lunch with two male friends, windows down and Dire Straits on full blast – what rebels we were. It wasn’t a particularly memorable lunch in that I wasn’t romantically involved with either of the men nor did I want to be, but for some reason the glorious feeling of freedom, end of exams, English summer has just stayed with me and the song always makes me smile.