Following the Pied Piper

Where are all the children is my question for today? Oh I know, I know, the other day I was complaining about tripping over them every two seconds and now I'm off in search of them. Ah, but I am remember a fickle woman after all. Anyway, I am not so much looking for children as looking for something to entertain them. What does Melbourne have to offer children I am wondering? It is school holidays after all, there must be something good on.

I was in Bizarre Beads this morning, a shop selling all sorts of colourful beads with which to design and make your own jewellery. They run workshops for children surely, I thought. Yes they do, the assistant assured me so I look around at the empty shop and she gives me a sheepish look and promises me that she's not lying. The other stores are the popular ones for kids, she says. And why? Because they are in the shopping malls of course and her shop is in Swanston Street in the city. Oh how sad. How sad that it is no longer a treat to come into the city in the school holidays like it used to be when we were kids. The shop assistant and I lament together over the changing times.

Okay so now I have to bite the bullet and go to a shopping mall if that is where it's all happening. Right about now I expect twice as many females to be tuning into my blog but sorry gals, in about two more lines, you will be declaring me a she-devil and disowning me from woman-kind. I think I have developed an allergy to malls. There I've said it, like I'm at an Mallrats Anonymous meeting or something. “Hello, my name is Louise and I can no longer stand the vacuousness of shopping malls.” Here is your cue to either clap or boo, hiss and throw rotten fruit at me.

On previous visits to Melbourne I was hypnotised into a comatose state wandering around Chadstone. The only claim to fame of this black hole disguised by conservatory glass is that it is the largest mall in the Southern Hemisphere and it was built sometime in the sixties I think.

My first day in Melbourne on this visit, in fact within two hours of setting foot on terra firma after a flight that drained all but my nasal passages, I was in South Mall with Debbie. My excuse here was that I was dazed by my cold and confused by the time difference. Debbie had an errand to run and I wanted to keep going so that I would not crash until I could adjust my body to Melbourne time.

Today's excuse as I travel to Highpoint in the suburb with the gorgeous name of Maribyrnong, is because it is almost at the end of the tram line 57 that I am riding today. I have chosen this number not out of a barrel in a lottery but because I want to pass the Flemington Showgrounds to get a look at the Melbourne Show. Highpoint then is killing two birds with one stone but as I enter the maze of monotonous food courts, plazas and shops I feel my pulse start to quicken and my breathing rate elevate. The walls are closing in on me and all I want to do is escape before the numbness descends but I steady myself with my mission. I can't leave until I have achieved it.

Thank god then that Highpoint is where I find some children doing, holiday stuff. There is an ice skating rink set up here for the kiddies to slip, slide and generally bumble unco-ordinatedly around on. Not that I can talk, my ice skating days ended with a dislocated patella, ouch. Among the same old, same old mall chain stores however, is one worth noting. It is called 'Build-a-Bear' and as its name suggests, you make your own stuffed teddy bear from the materials provided in this workshop. How cool is that, I think to myself until I realise that some delicate kiddies might be a bit traumatised being presented with an empty bear skin to stuff with fluff before they can get to the fun bit of dressing it. I can hear it now. “Daddy you've put too much bear gut in him, you've made him fat. No, no don't take it out, that's his tummy, he'll die if you take it out again!” Face it parent's there's no winning with this one.

So where else might the kiddies that can otherwise live without malls go in their weeks off. The Royal Melbourne Show of course. One of my hostel room mates, an English girl also called Louise, has a job giving toys to children at the Royal Melbourne Show. The event is like a two week Easter Show and A&P combined. It is on at Flemington Showgrounds next to the enormous Racecourse which in less than two months time, will be bustling with spectacularly hatted Melbourne Cup goers. I get off the tram here, not to go to the current event because quite frankly I can do without the crap plastic toy given to compensate my pathetic aim at any of the side shows, but to escape the departing crowds that have just filled the tram. I am immediately hit, even at this long distance, by the smell of horse shit but this is definitely where the kiddies are, spending their pocket money on cheap baubles for their hair, bodies and bedrooms. I shake my head and smile as parents and children stagger out under the weight of appalling kiss-me-quick hats and inflatable baseball bats or hammers. Not one has escaped without a plastic shopping bag laden with junk. It is just like another trip to the mall after all.