Sweating it out

I managed not to fall asleep on the train this morning. I did this by reading my copy of Graham Greene's A Burnt-Out Case. I picked it up when someone left a pile of stuff outside their office marked "free stuff" and thought 'yeah, I should read some Graham Greene' before I really realised it was about a leper colony; not really the happy but engaging read I was hoping to kick off the year with. And speaking of second-hand goods, I've been looking around for ages now for an old polaroid camera. I intend to lop off the front half of it with a hacksaw and converted it to a pinhole camera. What fun I have in store! I won one in an auction on ebay a few days ago but I'm still waiting for the seller to contact me ('yes, I can send you a money order but there's the small matter of needing your address first...' It's his first time; yes, an ebay virgin, so I'm trying to be gentle). Where was I...? Oh, right, yeah, I was in Norwood yesterday on some unrelated business and while C checked out that store with the cute picnic accessories, I limped over the road to the Vinnies op shop. I went in, did a quick reconnaissance of the store's interior and, not seeing anything vaguely polaroid, or camera, or even electronic, I made my way back to the front counter to ask if they might have any in stock. It was kind of a hot day yesterday; not sweltering, but a bit warm and a bit humid. They didn't have proper air-con in this place, only those big old metallic fans that look as though they could propel a small airplane, which were running full-boar (and gosh what a strange expression that is; must look it up some time). There were a couple of other people loitering around the front counter. As I waited, the smell in the place really hit me. Now I'm a pretty tolerant guy for things like this. I've travelled and I've been to Asian and European markets where there has been overwhelming (almost overpowering) olfactory evidence that perhaps not all the food on sale came straight from the vine/branch/slaughterhouse that morning. I've been around some large, smelly people on various public transport systems around the world. On the whole though, I've coped with it. Not yesterday though. Never before have I thought I might actually have a physical reaction to a smell as strongly as I did here. The smell wasn't like stale urine. I've smelled that enough times in various shop doorways in the vicinity of Hindley St, on bin night when it's full of nappies and there was that guy on the 106 bus about a year ago. No, this was more like concentrated stale perspiration with a hint of napthalene. Usually mothballs are used to cloak any other offending smells but this just wasn't cutting it. It was just mixed in with it and the overall effect was quite a pungent stench. I don't know if they wash the clothes before they go on sale; they're supposed to, aren't they? Maybe the carpet was made from the underarm hair of people living on the equator (where it's often hot and humid) with no good showering facilities. Needless to say, the polaroid became much less of a priority than keeping my lunch down had suddenly become. I'll just wait for the ebay virgin to come through.