On Friday evening, after getting sunburnt and dehydrated at the NAIDOC Family Day at Musgrave Park, I was supposed to chair a speak out at Brisbane Square about the Death Penalty.
I had to duck home from the park to grab lanterns, candles, flyers and matches for the candlelight vigil as a part of the speak out. The lanterns were an important consideration, as it’s been pretty blowy around Brisbane recently.
I also should have factored in that Brisbane Square is situated at the junction of two wind tunnels. Which almost wasn’t a problem as I couldn’t hail a cab to get me home anyway.
Eventually caught a bus, then a connecting bus, grabbed the stuff I needed, flagged a cab down on my way back into town, (with a gigantic megaphone I’d borrowed off a socialist friend of mine slung over my shoulder) in time to be barely 5 minutes late.
Which wouldn’t have been too bad, if I hadn’t been MCing the event. And hadn’t lost half the candles en route.
Dumped my props, handed over the job of trying to get the lanterns lit to others, then bolted off into the Myer Centre to try to buy some more tea light candles.
The shop I was heading for apparently shut its doors over recent months, so I ended up buying aromatherapy candles from a bridal store before heading back to the Square.
When I returned, I found that the consensus had cruelly turned against me in my absence, and the majority of people at the speak out had decided that a silent vigil, with the requisite handing out of flyers for our forum on August the 22nd would have to do.
Having invested much of my sanity in the pursuit of this event, I was somewhat reluctant to agree, but the freezing cross-breezes, the almost enclosing darkness (by 5.30pm) and the dismal state of our lanterns soon convinced me.
…I recommend planning ahead….everything which the author at last minutes tried to do could with good organisation have in a systematice manner been done long before the vigil….her credibility seems to have been compromised….in peace….