Time's Long Ruin Read Online Free

was keeping, and head home for a cup of tea made from bags.
    The smart ones got out quick. The Acorn deli was the first to close. The last, I think, was the post office, on the far side down near the church (which people stopped using also, but that’s another story). By the 1970s they’d all gone.
    But it’s funny how the wheel turns. Now the young ones are starting to buy those shops. A group of them knocked out the wall between John Cox the bootmaker and Ted Bilston’s Half-Case Fruit Shop and built a cafe. They polished the floorboards and set up chrome-edged melamine tables. Then they made a counter out of steel pipes and marble (don’t ask) and put a coffee machine on it. So now, every Saturday morning, ballet boy next door and his younger brother and all of the accountants go down and sit in an old fruit shop sipping lattes with little serviettes wrapped around the glass.
    Another lot gutted Joe Skurray’s old shop and put in a sort of art gallery. When I say art, I really mean those pictures with a few scribbles and splatters of paint. Nothing decent, like a Namatjira or some Heysen gums. Another lot bought Don and Mary-Anne Eckert’s grocery shop and started selling stuff from the 1970s: lamp shades, bean bags and loud dresses, a TAA bag and a little telly that looks like it was squeezed out of someone’s bum. Crap. Shit we threw out years ago. But apparently people buy it.
    And here’s the funniest thing of all. All of those folks hired a sandblaster and removed the paint from the side of the Acorn deli. And there it was, still – a big, black stallion. They got someone to redo it and now it’s as good as new: 2’6 a bottle, Ask your Local Chemist .
    So, if you live long enough, you see everything.
    Which takes me back to that sunny morning in 1960, as I arrived at the end of Elizabeth Street, where the railway line cuts Croydon in half. Beyond the railway line is Queen Street, and Port Road, with its supermarkets and six lanes of traffic.
    The railway crossing was manned. There’s Mr Pedavoli, Con, sitting in his four-foot-square gatekeeper’s box. He sits on a stool in front of a small, raised table covered with cups of Italian coffee, timetables, a crossword and a comb for fixing his hair every time he opens the gate. He looks up at a large timetable covering a whole wall, runs a finger along a line and then stops to listen. He lifts his head a little. He can hear Doctor Gunn talking in his workroom and the bottle-o loading his cart further along Day Terrace. He can hear birds and the breeze through the leaves of the plane and oak trees that line both sides of the track, and he can even hear heat rising from the road and the knock of the gates against their posts.
    It’s time. He runs the comb through his hair, straightens his black and white safety vest, and makes his way outside. He stops a few old dears about to cross the track. ‘A moment please, ladies.’
    â€˜There’s nothing coming.’
    But Con just taps his watch. He closes the pedestrian and traffic gates and stands waiting. Then he hears a whistle and sees black smoke from a small loco labouring towards them with three over-full carriages. One of the waiting drivers calls to him – he wanders over and a man hands him a paper bag full of freshly baked almond bread. He shakes the man’s hand and then stretches into the car to kiss someone.
    The train slows into Croydon. Con hobbles back towards the gate and gives the engineer a matter-of-fact wave. The train crosses the road and stops at the platform: a few people get in but no one gets out. Then Con opens the first and second traffic gates. None of the cars dare move before the gates are fully open. When he is finished Con waves them through. This is Con’s crossing. He has the neighbourhood very well trained. The only problems he ever has are with outsiders. But he puts up his hand and stops them and goes over and