It was somewhat of a blur the Albion Hotel on the corner of Lygon and Faraday. Dangerous liaisons were the wink and nod . The long table. I’d get there early when the place was empty except for the hard old drunkards that called this place home. So did I. There was something David Lynch about this place and I loved the dark secrets of palpable violence that oozed from its floors and walls. There was always a story there . I heard Gary Snyder drank at the front bar on a visit . He went undercover. But everyone knew it was he and he knew everyone knew that’s why he was there. He loved being notorious but in a quite sort of way. I sat on the long table waiting for it to fill. They came, they always did, afterall it was Friday night and the pub would fill to the rafters. It was a pub full of loners. Everyone alone and everyone craving for that beautiful erotic loner girl or boy. The parties somewhere in Carlton from a girl who got on the bandstand ,’ hey, come to our our house and get stoned’. And of course we did. The secret policeman ball with cops and hippies smoking from the same pipe lost in some Arabian night. It was the centre of the wheel. The kalacharka of time next to the Lebanese Palace home of Sydney Greenstreet and Bogie. Over the road was the bug house or Carlton movie theatre. I saw Chaplin in Modern Times. I couldn’t get Shakespeare but Charlie he’d do. Later I would wobble down the street to home and dream.