Almanac Life – Meet Me at the Mall’s Balls: Life and Phones

 


Image: Wikimedia Commons

 

We talk about it every now and then. How, before mobile phones, we’d make an arrangement with somebody and just have to stick to it.

‘Meet me at the Malls Balls at noon.’

Done.

‘See you tonight at the pub.’

Sorted.

Technology now allows us to break these agreements. Some might say mobile phones encourage rudeness. Or maybe they’ve made us more responsive to life’s twitchy demands. Is constant communication healthy? The social landscape has certainly shifted.

*

‘I’ll meet you at the finish line,’ I said to Claire.

‘About 9,’ she confirmed.

It was the morning of the City Bay Fun Run. Same as the year before, we’d a plan. Claire would be easy to spot in her pink jacket. I also liked to think that there’d be some mysterious, undeniable connection, a marital telepathy that would bring us together, despite the swarm of 25,000 runners and their innumerable hangers-on.

Exhausted, ruddy of cheek, and hands on hips, I was funnelled along Colley Terrace, peering about, trying to spot the pink jacket.

Where was she? Maybe over by the roundabout. No, she wasn’t.

Continuing to the race village in Wigley Reserve, I hunted among the marquees and food trucks and bibbed joggers. No luck. Back to the finish line. Same. No pink jacket.

What to do? That’s it! I’d borrow a stranger’s phone to ring Claire.

5AA had an MC at the music stage, and away he honked. He was pleased with himself and pleased with his voice. ‘Well done to all the participants. It’s been a great morning. Up soon we’ve got the Flaming Sambuccas who are going to play for you…’

I wondered if he might help me but he barely drew breath, so I walked off.

A safety of blue-uniformed police officers (nice collective noun) stood at a display, chatting among themselves. Approaching an officer I said, ‘Hello there. Hoping you can help me…’

Now, we don’t usually need to remember phone numbers. Who knows anybody’s number, beyond their own? It’s a redundant skill. How would I call her?

On the friendly officer’s phone, I pressed the buttons. How had I memorised the number?

Claire’s the holder of the Dan Murphy’s membership and if I pop in late Saturday morning (as I sometimes like to do) the cashier will say, ‘Do you have a membership?’ to which I reply, ‘Yes, I do’ and then I recite Claire’s phone number.

I’ve now heard myself say this dozens of times; just like my Grade 5 class learnt by heart ‘Mulga Bill’s Bicycle.’ There’s an everyday intimacy in it and it’s a little prayer. And what better place for this oration than Dan’s?

Shortly after, heading towards me I saw a pink jacket.

*

Later Sunday I was at Adelaide Oval while Claire attended day two of a conference at the convention centre on North Terrace.

The Tigers and Dogs were in a close one and I moved restlessly around the ground trying inanely to escape the foghorn chant. ‘U Dogs! U Dogs!’

Just after half-time Claire called to say that her phone was about to die. What to do? We’d planned to head home together. Ordinarily, we’d sort this much later.

So, again we made an arrangement. Two hours beforehand! Then followed two hours during which we had no contact! I watched the footy and Claire did conference things at the conference.

It seemed pioneering and almost dangerous. But there we were in this psychological uncertainty, both adrift, both untethered. Miraculously, we just went about our afternoons. It was thrilling and magical.

We’d decided on a time and place to meet and after a gap of a few hours, we were going to have to honour it. Just like it was 1987 and we were meeting at the Malls Balls before going to Brashs to buy an Uncanny X-Men CD.

Leaving the footy a few minutes early, with Glenelg off to the Grand Final, I made my way over the sunlit footbridge, up through the majestic railway station, across North Terrace and into the Strathmore Hotel.

Just as planned, Claire was there. Sitting on a stool, smiling, with an espresso martini in hand.

 

 

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About Mickey Randall

Now whip it into shape/ Shape it up, get straight/ Go forward, move ahead/ Try to detect it, it's not too late/ To whip it, whip it good

Comments

  1. Good one, Mickey! How about UBD/Refidex/Melways v GPS?

  2. Mickey Randall says

    Of course!

    GPS is great until it’s not. I suspect it’s very possible but what I want it GPS with a voice of my choosing like Michael Caine telling me in his Cockney crescendo, ‘I told you to go bloody left!’

  3. Cheree Dodson says

    Which Uncanny X-Men CD did you buy?
    In 2024, it might be worth something!

  4. Mickey Randall says

    Hello Cherie. After dismissing the obvious mention of 1987 stalwarts such as Aussie Crawl, Barnesy and U2 I went for Uncanny X-Men, entirely for the irony! Discogs (global online music marketplace) tells me their 1985 CD ‘Cos Life Hurts (especially with Uncanny X-Men as your soundtrack) can be purchased for about $16.

    The X-Men feature on The Glory Days of Aussie Pub Rock Vol.1 and this CD, Discogs also tells me, is conveniently available in Germany for €6.19 with shipping from only €12.95. Order now to avoid disappointment.

  5. Mark 'Swish' Schwerdt says

    Fortunately for you Mickey, I own both volumes of The Glory Days of Aussie Pub Rock, so next time you are over we can go through the entire 8 CDs/181 songs.

    In the extensive liner notes to the X-Men’s “Everybody Wants To Work” on Vol 1, said band “celebrated their own lack of couth with a hyperactive and poppy hard rock style that won them masses of fans in the mid-80s. Rude and irreverent, they filled the gap in between The Radiators and The Screaming Jets” – this is clearly code for “they were shit”

    On Vol 2, we are informed that their tune “Still Waiting” “received regular play on Channel 9’s “Wide World Of Sports” – of course it did.

  6. €6.19??? Tell him he’s dreamin’.

    I would have purchased the 7″ single of ‘Don’t Wake Me’ from their second album at that Brashs.
    It was absolute ‘hyperactive and poppy hard rock that was rude and irreverent’.

  7. Mickey Randall says

    Swish – in the mid-80’s as I approached twenty, I knew little of geopolitics, the beauty of the Cotswolds and the wonders of the Sistine Chapel. But in my own small-town ways, I knew deep in my heart, that the Uncanny X-men were unadulterated rubbish.

    Can’t wait for the Glory Days listening party. I’ll bring the sausage rolls and chicken salt.

  8. Mall memories of being let out of work (March 1977 Wikipedia suggests) to see QEII & entourage perambulate down the recently paved Rundle Mall (nee Street) on one of her revolutionary “meet the people’s”. No more glimpsing a gloved hand wave tepidly through the glass of the back window of a Bentley, Daimler or Rolls. This was royalty up close.
    Unfortunately for monarchists Maj was rather upstaged by Premier Don Dunstan’s glamorous new wife Adele Koh parading her silk Cheongsam split to the waist. Images would have captured males loyally shaking the gloved hand while eyes darted furtively right at the exotic beauty.
    In October 1977 the Hindmarsh Building Society donated Bert Flugelman’s vertically erect stainless steel balls. Wonder what inspired him?

  9. Mickey Randall says

    Greg A- if I had six euro in my skyrocket, I’d spend it on many things but not any Brian Mannix-related purchases!

    PB- it was either that Royal Tour or the one before and Kapunda Primary went over to a road behind Nuri and waited for hours to catch an audience with ER only for the black cars to roar past, ignoring us. Once the entourage was safely gone a mate ran onto the road and collected, ironically, a pebble which had been run over by the royal hearse. It remains my monarchical highlight.

  10. Colin Ritchie says

    Sometimes I wonder how we ever got by without a mobile phone!
    However, looking back I realise how organised we were without realising we were actually organised. As an individual you belonged to certain ‘groups’ – mates group, sporting groups, school groups, family groups, hangout groups etc. Each of those groups incorporated specific meeting/gathering places – eg. mates groups, usually someone’s house; sporting groups, obviously the footy/cricket ground; school groups, obviously school; family groups, home; hangout groups, the local milk bar, ‘up the street’, or a known location. Within those groups and at their specific locations decisions were made as to future activities, meet ups etc and everyone knew where to go to from there. In others words you knew where to be. Problems occurred when last minute or ad-hoc decisions were made. In that case if a phone box was handy you phoned a mate’s home who hopefully was in the know (if they had the phone on!) for an update. If not, you did a circuit of known possibilities on your bike or later your car hoping to eventually make contact. A bit long-winded but I think you get the gist of what I’m saying!

  11. Sweet life.

  12. Love this MR, and yer right, how did we ever get places and meet up with friends.

    In the early 80s I was in a Theatre-in-Education group with Matty Q, touring plays all over Perth and WA. We had schedules to be at different schools at specific times, every day for weeks and months on end. And we did it, without mobiles, GPS or the interwebbything. I’m a wreck from all the stressful times we endured but by god we did it.

    Not sure I’d go with safety as a collective noun for coppers, just saying. :)

    And Uncanny X-Men was a good call for narrative needs, pity it wasn’t ’88, that’s when Weddos song, Under the Clocks came out, and Melbournians all know that meeting spot!

    Cheers

  13. Barry Nicholls says

    Good work, Mickey. This is a nice reminder of things before phones. I have a memory of Dunstan being part of their launch. The Mall Balls were a designated meeting place for many school kids on a Friday afternoon.

  14. Mickey Randall says

    Thanks for reading. Yes, Col and Rick we did things without phones that today look miraculous to the young or unenlightened. Appreciate it Barry and Pards.

    At lunch recently in the excellent Greenock pub, a friend told a story about his grandfather. Decades and decades ago, he was talking with a golfing mate, and it emerged that they’d both be in London at the same time in about six months. They agreed to meet in a certain pub for lunch at 1pm on a particular day and without any further correspondence, simply turned up at the designated time and place, shook hands and dined.

  15. So relatable, Mickey.

    Enjoyed this very much.

  16. Mickey Randall says

    Thanks, Smokie. My boys find it bemusing that I have an iPhone 6. It seems antediluvian to them.

  17. Luke Reynolds says

    Love this Mickey, it really is hard to imagine at times that we lived without phone.

    I still have my iPhone 6, no reason to upgrade.

  18. Did you ever type “dan murphy opening hours” into another application, Mickey, thinking it was Google?
    Not sure if that episode travelled west of the Glenelg River, but Nobel laureate immunologist Peter Doherty did exactly that during the interminable COVID years in Melbourne. Into Twitter. Earned him 10K likes & a swag of new followers.

    A year later he’d given way alcohol.

    Well played Mickey.

  19. Mickey Randall says

    Luke- whenever I see news footage of yoof sleeping in line out the front of stores so they can buy a new phone it’s that rare time when I don’t envy them their younger years. The iPhone 6 is the Betamax of mobiles.

    Er- I did catch that story, and it made me smile. I reckon Thursday is discount day at Dan’s for Nobel laureates.

    Thanks.

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