Lego-brick Deck

The taxi deck in town makes me think of the Lego creations I used to make when I was a kiddie. My brother had all the architectural talent, I would just build and build and build and put little blocks wherever they could fit in. The more blocks I could squeeze in, the better. Similarly, the deck is just filled with little bits and pieces squeezed in next to each other, on top of each other, over each other, in fact in every prepositional relationship to one another as can be imagined. There are the lines of taxi lanes, filled with lines of taxis and lines of people. And then there are the men who walk with boxes of ice-creams in between the lines of waiting, and the men who walk with toilet-rim cleaners, with batteries, with packets of tissues and packets of Crack-a-Snacks. All of this is over the lines of the railway below, which you can see if you stand on the eastern edge of the deck and look down over the squat little wall covered in a blackish powdered smudge. And to the north, on the otherside of Strand Street, buses in their lanes chugging-chugging and empty lanes looked over by people with their shopping bags.

The deck is home to a hundred little white box-shops not quite as big as a single garage. No space between them, just lined up one after the other selling clothing and shoes, a hair salon next to a cafe, next to a man with a camera and a variety of painted backdrops, sitting on a three-legged stool and shouting to his neighbour. It's Xhosa and Afrikaans and English and French. Sometimes spoken across languages. It's loud and it's matched by a man playing music near the stairs that take you down to the station.

So you weave your way through the Lego bricks. Busy-busy-busy. Hooting taxis and shouting gaaitjies, you have to walk where you can, when you can, no one will wait for you here but they might slow down if you wave while you walk. Packed in with all the other Lego bricks into a taxi to Mowbray, you sit squashed in against the window between the old man with the cap who greets the bus with a courteous "Middag almal*" and the woman with the fuscia-coloured doekie who started wearing pink last year and just hasn't stopped and yes it is bright and summery isn't it.

Zoom, zoom, zoom and down past the Goodhope Centre and onto the Main Road. Away from the noise and suddenly it's quiet. They taxi is full so there's nothing for the gaaitjie to shout about. No music, no CCFM radio drama. Just quiet. The driver sits eating a PS Chocolate in a purple wrapper, you know the milk chocolate one..? One hand on the chocolate, one alternating between steering wheel and gear stick. He's chewing on that chocolate so assuredly, so patiently. His jaw moves slowly round and round like a cow chewing grass, not up, not down, but round and round. In this absurdly quiet taxi. The Lego bricks are left behind.

* Afternoon everyone