A View of the Flock

A weekend or so ago, my husband and I went to a favorite restaurant of ours which is down on the end of Bourke Street, near the Parliament House in Melbourne. Parliament House is a gorgeous High Victorian building with lots of steps and pillars and collects loads of cookie cutter wedding parties for their cookie cutter photographs, but that's probably another rant entirely (in fact, it probably will be eventually).

What we were doing there this particular weekend was not watching the wedding parties (a hobby of ours), but having breakfast at Fast Eddie's. We took a seat near the window and as we enjoyed our meals we noticed a strange phenomenon (even stranger than brides who look like big merangues and bridesmaids done up like cheap tarts in red satin).

There was a flock of sheep in the street outside.

Well, okay, they were actually pubescent human beings, but they were certainly sheep. They were dressed all alike. The uniform for girls was black, generally a blazer and short skirt, with platform shoes or boots, and sometimes that peculiar chest covering which Aussies call a "boob tube" and Americans used to call a "tube top". The boys wore dark trousers or jeans, white t-shirts or black shirts, and black shoes.

They all had the exact same hair. The girls had long hair (shoulder-length or longer) parted in the middle and hanging straight on both side of their faces. The boys had hair which was either parted in the middle and gel'd straight down on either side (talk about a damned stupid hairstyle!) or sort of twisted up into little rock-hard gel'd spikes all over their heads (repeat: talk about a damned stupid hairstyle).

They were all the same age, give or take two years, all about fifteen.

The hung out in small groups, talking and giggling (the girls) and smoking (mostly the boys).

There were hundreds of them.

Apparently the Metro, a nightclub near Fast Eddie's, has a "youth" club in the afternoons sometimes, and these little clubbers-to-be were gathering for the festivities at the Metro. Nevermind that the doors wouldn't open for an hour, they had to be there or be square. Or whatever the current hip phrase is.

Eventually, a rather large group of the little sheep started moving up the street for some reason. Smaller groups of the sheep watched and looked slightly confused (probably wondering what was at the other end of the street), but then joined the bigger flock and trotted along, giggling and smoking and chatting.

My husband and I were, by this time, chuckling rudely and making "baaaahhh" noises to each other as we watched the group of cookie-cutter youths ambling along with their companions.

When we finished our meal and left the restaurant, we went across the street and glanced back at the Metro. What I saw is what absolutely convinced me that these pubescent humans were really sheep in teenaged clubber clothing.

I once read a book about sheep, and that you could contain them with a "fence" made of ropes and sticks, because the animals are so stupid they don't realize they can knock the fence right down. This sort of "temporary paddock" was (possibly is; I admit I'm no expert on raising sheep) fairly common when moving a large flock from one pasture to another.

Outside the Metro that day was a temporary "holding pen" made of those velvet rope things you see in banks and theatres. Inside the temporary paddock stood a flock of the sheeple, milling around very quietly and waiting to be let into the Metro.

I actually laughed out loud.

Perhaps I should have wept.

<< Conformity Main Directory Page Child Safe >>

All content copyright © Bonni Hall, 1998-2006. All rights reserved. Web design by Alicorna.

Subscribe to this site via RSS Feed

This site is part of BonniNet.