Let’s speak of two things.

Pies, and taxi driver wisdom.

To pies, first.

It was when my son, Julian, far more fastidious than I, said, “That pie was the best I’ve ever had”, that I thought about the pies at 6,7, ate, the little cafe on the corner of Abercrombie and Levey, here.

For location, see map of Chippo put up by Sustainable Chippendale, here:

www.sustainablechippendale.com…

Then, today, doing my best to do nothing much this long weekend, I made myself lunch at the shack here with a pie from 6, 7, ate and some veggies picked by local farmers on Tuesday, from my box from Sydney Food Connect.

As I ate, I got it.  That boy could be right.  The pie’s pastry was fresh as, the innards of the pie spoke to me, and the whole thing was special for its sum of clearly distinguishable tastes.  A marvel that now, thinking back, has been in every pie I’ve bought there, whether vegetarian, with meats, and quiches, too.  They’s passed me by, really, ’til the quiet of the holiday day.

Do you remember yesterday?  When I walked out early in it I thought there’d be a mistake.  Such a day. Cool air against my flesh, a song in the air and a balanced nuance to the light and heart of a day such as I’ve not seen for weeks.

But, not seduced, yet, by all this, I later walked off to Broadway to catch a taxi and get to a meeting in town.

Crossing at the lights there was an empty taxi, pulled up, ready to roll.

As I got in he said, “If you get in this taxi today you have to like Slim Dusty”.

He had on a CD of Slim Dusty for truck drivers.

I reckoned he was right and said so.  We headed off to the city and its dark arts. He handed me a rubber-banded stack of CDs to look at: I saw eclectic: blues, opera, the arcane (some of which I had, too) and so on.

What a surprise.

I asked him to turn it up, and he did.

We rounded Central with the lights heading on a good run though to the slough and stuff of the CBD, sun filling the insides of the taxi, and, I think, us.

Then he said, “With weather like this your imagination goes out over the Blue Mountains . . . “.

I could think of nothing to say that.  Anyway, I was too stunned to.

You get a taxi driver, he doesn’t have to justify anything, you get a gift.  He was the man for the day.

May the pies be with us, and our imagination over the Blue Mountains,

Michael