James O'Brien

As if we don’t already have enough construction underway in the neighbourhood (eventually it will be awesome, but for right now, the light rail is a pain in the arse) they’re building a new apartment block on the corner of my street. Though I mostly use the back lane-way to enter my building, I thought I’d go for a walk down the street for a closer look. After all, it was a Sunday, there’d be no one around, I thought, but to my surprise there was a bit of activity.

I’d just been for a lengthy walk around the neighbourhood, starting in Darlinghurst and ending up back in Surry Hills. Along the way, I snapped a few photographs of things which caught my eye for the first time, or in the case of the beautiful door at Mrs Red & Sons, for the umpteenth time in many, many years.

In the midst of all the construction work, it was lovely to look around and reflect on what a terrific neighbourhood it is to live in.

And then, when I entered the street to take a look at the apartment block construction, I saw a thirty-something bloke (who I later discovered was called Angus) all by himself, struggling, to re-erect the construction fence, which had been blown down by the strong winds of the last day or so.

“Do you need a hand?”, I asked him, to which he replied with an enthusiastic yes. Though I thought this would be a quick, easy job, it actually turned out to be quite a job. The fence and stabilisers were very heavy.

After a while, another bloke called Pepper, who also lives in my street, stopped by to help. Eventually, we got the fence standing upright, and despite a flew bloody scratches, I felt a sense of join achievement, in my first bit of proper manual work in many, many years. And hey, Surry Hills – the suburb where people help others.