(diaryland) August 19, 2000 - 12:30:36

Last night, Rosie and I went to the Esplanade Hotel to see live music. We saw one vaguely good band, and we also saw an extremely excellent band called From the Inside, which I think is an awfully silly name; even sillier than Unfolding Mud (the name of one of my bands, in case you didn't know). But anyway, yes, they were very, very good. They sounded rather Deftones-like, which was quite pleasant. The bass player looked like he was having some sort of mind-opening experience. He was cool.

Yes, anyway, this diary entry is actually about something else, so I'll stop waffling on about the good band.

Yesterday, I was waiting on platform three of Flinders Street Station, the biggest station in Melbourne, for my train. It was peak hour. There were trains zooming around all over the place, and there was a lot of hustling and bustling. All of a sudden, there seemed to be even more hustling than usual. Two dudes were fighting rather desperately. One guy really wanted to get onto the train that was about to leave; the other one really wanted him not to do that. I thought they were both drunk or something.

Anyway, one of the dudes had his bottom hanging out the train door. The train really wanted to leave. The PA system said, "PLEASE STAND CLEAR OF THE TRAIN." It was an angry PA system. The dude inside the train finally managed to extricate himself from the grip of the other dude, and as the doors were closing, he looked rather pleased with himself. The train began to move, and the dude on the outside of the train yelled, "Stop the train! That man stole a wallet!"

I was all like, "Oh." Now I knew why they had been fighting. The train immediately stopped, and all these official metropolitan transport guys came running to the train. The theif on the inside of the train knew he was screwed. He opened the window on the other side of the train and jumped right onto the train tracks. It was peak hour at the time, and I was really worried that some train would appear and crush him to bits. But it didn't. He ran up onto the other side of the tracks and sprinted off into the crowd. The dude who had been fighting him had his backpack. He so was going to get caught. There were police everywhere.

Who steals a wallet in the middle of Flinders Street Station?