Darley Street: Episode Four – Empty Spaces
It’s one of those average mornings, the weather is overcast and it’s been drizzly, that late Autumn feel that sometimes makes people miserable, with lots of people anticipating the oncoming winter season. They are not ready for it yet so they stay at home or shuffle off to do only things they have to do, like work.
Sally opens the front blind in her shop and then steps out to sweep the front path, Autumn leaves have built up overnight, time to remedy that, for at least a few hours. Sweeping commences, she stops to take a break, Soren wanders in, they exchange pleasantries.
Soren points out he has spotted a person checking out the window of the empty shop up in Hill Street opposite the carpark. Sally looked up and could see a middle aged male heading towards Darley Street.
It wasn’t long before he had crossed onto her side of Darley Street, introductions made, Cal, or Callum to be more formal. He chatted to Sally suggesting he was interested in setting up a business in the empty shop. He had a few questions to ask if she didn’t mind.
Cal was very polite and of a happy disposition, he wanted to set up a pizza shop, not a franchise one, a simple down to earth hand made pizza shop with organic ingredients.
Sally answered his questions and added a few things of her own, pointing out that the Fab Foods store sold organic produce, so there could be a nice connection there.
Cal was most appreciative of their conversation and said he would chat to others in the street. The facebook page for the businesses lit up for a while with people wondering about the guy and how serious he was.
By the time he had headed up the street and chatted to a few people the questions shared on the page meant that he was being seriously ‘grilled’ by the time he got to the last few shops.
Gail, who owned the shop, used the opportunity to ‘freshen up’ the paperwork for the shop; no one had shown any interest for a long time and now seemed like a good time to see that all was in order.
Gail looked at her numbers, the shop was left empty, for Tax purposes which sometimes caused Gail to feel a little guilty that the other business in the area had to put up with her empty shops, just because it suited her.
He didn’t drop in on Gail but seemed to get enough info from his casual approach chatting to others. He said to Artie at the cobbler shop that he felt it would be an ideal place to set up.
Well, weeks went by and ‘Cal’ wasn’t seen again until one Saturday, Artie spotted him out the front heading into another shop. It turned out that Cal needed a few other things to fall into place to get started in business and that hadn’t happened, so perhaps on another occasion.
There was some discussion on the Facebook page about how this seems to happen from time to time. Someone started a chat about what sorts of businesses others would like to see.
Things started out civil enough, then some humor took over. ‘A tattoo parlour, there's plenty of space for bikers to park their bikes in the carpark.’ Halley and Quinn at Carl’s cards thought that was a great idea.
Another suggestion was a Pay Day loan store… that got some rather serious put downs from others. People didn’t want ‘that sort of person’ hanging out in their street.
One thought was a pop up store selling puppies… hmm that got some tongues wagging, no pun intended. A toy shop, maybe?
There is a Nepalese community building in numbers not far away so any mention of an Asian style supermarket was soon shot down and deleted. People were reminded of the guidelines that were put in place for the page. Be nice and respect others… Others wondered about how that was offensive?
Chloe mentioned a funny thing she saw recently at a sports store across town, a person apologising out loud to a life-sized cardboard cutout of a sports star after bumping into it. The few people standing nearby had a good giggle about that one.
The chat then turned to the empty shop further up Darley Street which was taking a long time to renovate. Gail knew what it would be, but was tight lipped, the proprietor wanted it that way, why a bakery should be so secretive was a bit of a wonder.
The average day soon turned into a bit more of a humorous exchange, some hope, followed by more sweeping, the days had turned to weeks, the hope faded, the jokes did the same and in the end things turned out quite differently.
Customer numbers were down, the weather can do that, but Sally wondered if a pizza shop were to open, would that improve things during the day, maybe not. Rex and Soren talked about shop options, one thing they didn’t want was for the shop to become a storage area or an office, like a real estate office. These didn’t add much to the customer mix they thought.
No two days were the same in Darley Street; people come, and people go. The time spent with Cal was no exception, pizza anyone?
Stay tuned for the next episode of Darley Street on Wednesday 24 June!
More from Steve Gray
Steve writes with passion and intrigue, aiming to inspire and or raise awareness of topics. His poetry can take abstract turns, and his 'Odd Angry Writes' on his website are sure to turn heads with his aggressive approach to topics.
A background in Art and Design, as well as teaching, often gives his written pieces a unique creative perspective.
Like many, he is an ADHD person with some neurodiverse edges. A bunch of E books under his belt and some honourable mentions in the Geelong Writers Group puts his work in good standing.
