Books and mortar.

The central train station is opposite the State Library, a compact but majestic building with the sort of distinguished interior that should have a cameo in all good lawyer movies. At 8.15am this morning I walked out of the station and was a bit disorientated by the sight of more than a hundred men in work clothes and white hard hats mooching around in front of the library. It looked like a scene out of a monty python movie: a gaggle of construction workers. They were standing in approximate groups spread across the lawn and a few of them were wandering around with clipboards.

Sometimes the space is used for political protests but there were no placards to be seen and the men looked quite happy. There is a construction site next door though so I my best guess is that some sort of siren had sounded and the State Library was the agreed meeting place. It made for an interesting juxtaposition - men of action in front of a place of learning, in a funny way it seemed to fit together quite nicely.