Suicide Wednesday?

There must be something in the air today because it's not even 5:00pm yet and I've already seen about ten people attempt to kill themselves.

The first few were at the crossing between Central Station and Belmore Park . But this is nothing new. Every morning I watch idiotic pedestrians creep their way to the edge of the road, lean forward as far as their mortal human frames will allow them and then wildly fling themselves in the way of oncoming traffic.

I have weighed up the option that perhaps they are just that desperate to get to work, but it seems unlikely.

A mere five minutes later I saw an obese man actively trying to break his neck to the sound of Britney Spears. I have similar impulses when I hear her music, but strangely it seems she wasn't causing his plight. Instead it seems his motivation was to be rejected on national TV at next year's SYTYCD auditions. His attempts at what I can only assume was meant to be breakdancing would be enough to make a mafia torture master gasp with fright and the writers of the Darwin Awards drop whatever they're doing, hop onto the first flight to Australia, take short notes as they pass the Lemming masses of suicide road-crossers and hold their pen and paper ready for gravity to work its magic. If his neck doesn't succumb to the swinging mass of the rest of him maybe you'll get to see him in action one day. I doubt it.

So onwards to my office...and what did I see just before I entered the sliding doors of my building? A sizeable Hertz van happily gliding the wrong way up (one-way) Castlereagh Street. The driver was so blissfully happy to be spying Sydney in his bright orange Hawaiian shirt that he was apparently quite oblivious to the chorus of horns violently blaring at him. It took three cars to swerve out of his way before he noticed. Even then he didn't seem too shaken. With the smile of someone who's had an impressive dose of Valium he performed a fifteen-point-turn and went on his merry way.

I haven't been outdoors since then and frankly I'm a little concerned about what will happen when I have to meet with a restaurant owner at 3:00pm. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't involve prawns.