As this petty pace creeps from day to day - it does so with much commotion and chaos, especially in a city. Life is loud and hectic and can be overwhelming.

Quite recently we visited the city of Melbourne. Our accommodation was a small, sunny studio in South Yarra. Evergreen trees stretched skyward past our 2nd floor balcony and exotic birds chirped and flitted amongst the branches. We were delighted by the dappled morning light filtering through the leafy vista onto our breakfast table … and then the roadworks began. Abruptly our mornings of toast and tranquility were replaced by bone shaking heavy machinery, the screech of drilling, and the shouting of workers. The howling strains of a Viking Metal anthem emanated from one of the dust coated, tool filled vans adding to the general cacophony and suddenly leaving the apartment felt like stepping into Valhalla rather than a gentrified Melburnian morning. Each day we navigated the mayhem and picked our way along the dug up road laced with trenches and safety cones, buoyed by the promise of espresso and propelled by the need to escape the noise. Soon we reached the bustle of Toorak Road where trams screeched past with an almost dental whine cutting through the incessant thrum of cars. We finally arrived at our chosen coffee destination, a symphony of conversation bounced off the polished concrete floors while the coffee machine wheezed and clattered and the obscured vocals of a modish, shoe gaze artist ricocheted between the pot plants and the walls. I sat very still and sipped my coffee in a misguided attempt to compose myself with caffeine.

On Saturday morning, after visiting a surprisingly quiet music shop on an errand for my son we entered the fray of the South Melbourne Market. The noise and abundance were astonishing - like an enormous Jackson Pollock painting of culinary stimulation that your brain is tasked to disentangle whilst being urgently distracted by a rising sense of hunger and the irrational desire to buy and taste everything. We bought French Comté cheese and interesting seeded crackers, we sampled oysters from Sydney and tasted fig gelato. It was delicious and exhausting.

 After the market we took the tram to St Kilda and a moment of whimsy found me standing in line for the ghost train at Luna Park. I had never been on a ghost train and I liked the idea of righting a childhood wrong where many years ago, my one and only attempt at riding the ghost train had been unfairly thwarted by a disciplinary father. A revenge ride so many decades later seemed to make perfect psychological sense. The wait was long and the ride was short - the little carriage plummeted through the darkness, clanged around corners, dodged scuttling rats and levitating skeletons and shuddered its way back out into the daylight, all in a matter of minutes. As I sat there, gripping the cold steely rail in front of me, listening to the metallic shriek of the rails, feeling the vertigo of speed in the dark and the spirit whipped wind blow through my hair it occurred to me that the ghost train was perhaps an analogy of daily life. That in fact, I felt like this most days. Hurtling through each day towards the future requires some grit and tenacity. Life is fast and unpredictable, it is noisy, it can be frightening and also thrilling, we are sometimes left in the dark and often we would quite like to pull the emergency cord and slow the whole thing down.

But thankfully, unlike the ghost train, we are able to pause. I so often need to find a quiet place, somewhere calm to rest and restore. At home I have a chaise longue not dissimilar to the one featured here, a couple of hours on a sunday afternoon with a book, maybe some music or alone with my thoughts is the tonic I need to feel ready to reboard that train. I hope that this beautiful French, 19th century chaise longue may become somebody else’s treasured, quiet place. The necessary calm within the storm.

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