feeding the swains

Yesterday I saw two people having a very cute picnic in a park. They were sitting side by side on one of the benches facing in to the path and had a card table set up with checkered blue and white tablecloth, two glasses, an open bottle, bowls of nibblies, real napkins… the whole nine yards. Which is about how many Brisbane backyards would have fit in this skimpy narrow green strip that provided space for a few lovely trees to grow between the six-storey apartment houses. The picnickers were in their fifties and looked to have dressed for the occasion, she had on make up and sparkly earrings and he had on his good jeans. They looked so happy. They saluted me with raised glasses when I smiled at them. Ten minutes earlier I’d passed a man feeding a swan, by the river, he sat cross-legged on a large tree stump with his own glass of wine, paper parcel of food, and the swan bent its elegant neck to fetch things from his hand. First sunny day in a while and the greensward was littered with revellers – revellers and their bicycles – room enough to sit but not to lie down. Plenty of swans foraging the riverbank in hopes of crumbs and morsels. My German-speaking friend calls them ‘swains.’