The 2nd Plane
All morning the radio bulletins blared warnings about the westerlies due to strike the state. Gales, they say, topping 100 clicks per hour were coming. Fasten your wheelie bins. Batten your pets. Lock up the patio furniture.
And the radio was right. Zephyrs turned to gusts turned to gales. Whole branches blew across the Monash. Yachts beached. The West Gate Bridge, too exposed to the elements, shut all lanes. My gate lost a hinge.
But I’d been puzzling all morning, and the stomach needed lining, so I took to the risky streets for a forage.
Hurricane Katrina, move over. Hey Cyclone Tracy, you’re so yesterday. These winds were atomic. Slates jumped off roofs. Awnings inverted. Drought dust turned the air red. But this man was after a tuna salad.
That’s when the Mad Bomber struck. Sheltered in a deli we all heard the crunch. Not a celery stick but something bigger, more sinister. Like moths to a candle we flapped outside to see the giant plane tree of Station Street lying across traffic. No-one was hurt, but the carnage of foliage was spectacular.
News crews arrived before the tree surgeons. The crowd multiplied, a dozen Motorolas held aloft to snap the snap. Toddlers learnt to swear. Sceptics had to touch the exposed roots. You couldn’t more for boom mikes and rubber-necks, and that’s when the second bomb detonated.
Kaboom. Or bam. Thud? It was no time for onomatopoeia. Just 50 metres south, the twin giant shading the menswear shop snapped in half, its crown hurling through the air and landing at the tailpipe of a stranded bus. The second impact evoked that terrorist ploy, setting off one bomb and delaying the second until the ghouls have assembled.
Or Confucius - if a falling plane tree is heard by a multitude of ears, it falls many times.
But what are the odds? A brace of trees toppling a block apart, all in the space of a macchiato? Pretty low, I guess, especially when the knots are so high. But in all my suburban days – and those distant swashbuckling years – I’ve never seen such choreography.
To quote a kerbside sage, ‘Jeez she’s blowy today.’