I have a habit of getting sick on holidays. On our Lindeman Island honeymoon, I had sunstroke and heat rash. On holiday with a friend at Lake Cathie I had an allergic reaction to sun block that brought me out in hives. I have had food poisoning in Katoomba, Adelaide, Cessnock and Southend on Sea. I have broken my ankle in two places: Sydenham & Millthorpe. Admittedly the Sydenham ‘trip’ wasn’t a holiday, I was on my way to work, but falling over in Millthorpe was a decisive break in our Orange winter break!
Recently a planned Sydney visit was presaged with foreboding when I developed a nasty cold and needed Sudafed and nasal spray to get through the car journey and that evening’s performance of Candide at the Opera House. However, judiciously balancing activity and rest over the following days got me fit as a flea* for dinner with friends and An Evening with Jimmy Webb by week’s end. My smugness was to be challenged though – imminently…
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| The ABC reported on Sydney's heat and humidity on 15 March |
According to an ABC
news report, Saturday 15 March was the hottest autumn day Sydney had experienced
for 149 years. Temperatures nudged 40 degrees and humidity was over 70%.
Sydney’s mugginess was one reason for our decision to leave that city. Early in
the day, I was coping well through brunch, a bit of telly and an afternoon nap.
When I headed to town I noticed that the air conditioning on the train to Kings
Cross was struggling a little, but waiting for my friend, Ian, by the Victoria
Street station exit I felt a pleasant breeze while enjoying the passing parade
of tourists and denizens.
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| The calm before the sweat tsunami |
Ian arrived dapper in pressed jeans and a T-shirt and joggers, both of luminous white. I teased him about his immaculate appearance and he admired my colourful jungle print dress. Our dinner/theatre booking at The Old Fitzroy was over an hour away so we had ample time to amble through Potts Point to Woolloomooloo. Both assuming we knew where we were headed, we went north down Victoria Street toward Garden Island Dockyard and turned left/west into Cowper Bay Wharf Roadway and ferocious sun. We turned off briefly into Brougham Street mistaking a backpacker hostel for The Old Fitzroy but did a U-turn. Ian is ex-navy so I appealed to his supposed navigation skills only to be told he had left his sextant back in his apartment. I consulted my phone but the combination of the map’s scale, the ever reorienting little blue arrow and conflicting verbal directions sent us crisscrossing through Woolloomooloo. Soon my steamed up glasses and sweat filled eyes prevented me from seeing the screen clearly anyway. Ian’s glasses were back at the apartment with his sextant. Tourists from Byron Bay, New Zealand and Ireland we asked were as clueless as us and with better reason.
At the corner of Bourke and Dowling Streets we intimated that we were well wide of our destination. By this time I was a sodden wreck and had rung the pub and left voicemails twice hoping to get directions. Cathedral Street was a denominator common to the phone app and to Ian’s recollections but we couldn’t agree whether to turn right or left at the corner of Forbes. Luckily a kindly local convinced us to go right and lo, the sign for The Old Fitzroy came into view. Appropriately enough, that signage contains the phrase ‘This must be the place’. We were 5 minutes early for our dinner booking having traversed Woolloomooloo for approximately 45 minutes. Two flights of stairs took us to the restaurant cooled only by ceiling fans. I asked where the loos were so that I could ‘repair’ my hair and visage and the charming maitre’d pointed back down those two flights of stairs. One jug of iced water, 2 glasses of Sauvignon Blanc a piece and some ill-advised pate and gnocchi later, it was time to see Iphigenia in Splott in the basement theatre. Back down the stairs we hurried and, as the last to enter, found the only remaining seats, on a narrow bench at the very top of the steeply raked rows.
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| The Old Fitzroy pub, theatre and restaurant in Woolloomooloo (Google for directions) |
The brick walls of the small theatre are uneven and painted a dull black. The air conditioning seemed to be the evaporative sort with humidity poorly managed. The atmosphere was claustrophobic. Meg Clarke, in skanky active wear, used the four intersecting grey rectangles that comprised the set dynamically to deliver her monologue. We were introduced to her character who is a tear away young Welsh woman in an unsatisfying relationship with a thick bloke who fails to pick up his dog’s droppings in the street. Her main recreation is getting blotto in Splott and one night, fulfilling this mission, she meets a soldier, an amputee, with whom she begins a passionate affair. That’s about as far as I got…
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| I wonder how it turns out... |
I felt waves of cold sweat wash over my brow and I flopped forward in three distinct micro second movements coming to rest on the shoulder of the audience member in front of me. The next I knew I was lying on the bench seat unable to right myself and semi delirious. A disembodied woman introduced herself as a doctor. She took my pulse, described my colour, clamminess and respiration to others and at one point stroked my cheek reassuringly. I heard someone say ‘call an ambulance’ and report back that there would be a two hour wait. The anonymous doctor took matters into her own hands and spoke to the ambulance dispatch people. In ten minutes paramedics were on the scene.
The Old
Fitzroy is somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years old. It is
amongst the most intact pubs of its era still operating and perhaps the only
one to have maintained its performance space for decades. Before Iphigenia in Splott it staged a
smorgasbord of praised productions including plays by Harold Pinter and Lillian
Hellman and solo shows by Paul Capsis and iOTA. Given its age the fact that it
is not an accessible building is unsurprising. This presented special
challenges for the ambos. The gurney made it through the doors and a special
folding carry chair got about half way up the incline. Somehow my support squad,
which included Ian, the doctor, the man whose shoulder I had come to rest on (I
think), and the paramedics eventually got me vertical, down a couple of stairs and
into the seat and from there onto the stretcher/gurney. All the while the kind
ambulance officer talked me through what was happening as they got me settled in the ambulance and
applied monitors for my heart rate, took my temperature and pulse and measured
my blood pressure which was a disturbing
80/30. She gave me a tubular vomit bag to clutch but fortunately, while I felt
woozy, I didn’t need to use it. Ian stayed beside me on the trip to St
Vincent’s and tolerated the hospital environment until 11pm despite its
less than happy associations for him. I
was a little uninhibited in my conversation apparently as twice he responded to my statements with ‘TMI’. I do remember warning him not to steal my frock
when they made me divest myself of it for a hospital gown. Its riot of candy
colours would have shown off his complexion to excellent effect.
St
Vincent’s staff were amazing in their thoroughness and good humour and the care
they took of me. I had two more ECGs, blood
and urine tests (I hadn’t peed from 3 pm to 11.20 pm which supported a
dehydration diagnosis), three lots of fluid and oxygen because my level was
initially 87. When I explained that there was no one with a car to come and
collect me they moved me to a quieter area of the Emergency Unit where I
managed to get some reasonable sleep
amidst the symphony of machines that go
ping, PA announcements and patient call buzzers. While Sydney sweltered through
that uncharacteristically sultry autumn night I was cool enough in my cubicle
to need two blankets. In the morning I
was given a breakfast of juice, cereal and yoghurt and provided with four soft towels to have
a shower. By the time I was discharged and caught a taxi back to where I was
staying my electrolytes and spirits were high. I scored a taxi driver whose
daughter coincidentally works in Pathology at St Vincent’s and who knew about
the history of the Grand Pacific Blue Room currently being refurbished as the
Olympia Boutique Hotel on the corner of Oxford and Streets. That was of course right up my alley! And I made my 3.30 pm flight home with ease.
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| St Vincent's brekkie pack |
Everyone
has been commiserating with me about this incident but I think I had a very
easy time of it and am full of appreciation and gratitude for everyone who intervened especially lovely solicitous Ian who kept me light hearted throughout.
I am sorry I interrupted the play and the enjoyment of the other audience
members. When Lucy Clements, Artistic Director of New Ghosts Theatre Company
emailed me the following day to enquire how I was going, I apologised for my
show stopping performance and she was kind enough to reply:
please don’t think twice about the
show stop – the plot points you missed in the play were all about how wonderful
healthcare staff are, but how hard it is for them to work with such large
funding cuts – so the events that unfolded in reality (being told the ambulance
would take 2 hours to attend to you!!) were much more dramatic, poignant and
impactful to us than the play ever could be.
What a trouper!
I will certainly visit the Old Fitz again but will be avoiding Sydney humidity.
As for my and Ian’s inability to make the walk from Kings Cross Station to the
pub in the nine minutes Google maps now tells me is standard, let not our
excitement in meeting up after almost a decade ever again eclipse the need for
sensibly checking our route in advance, or at least let’s not leave the sextant
at his place again!
*why are
fleas particularly ‘fit’? I suppose they must do their squats to be able to jump like that.
