There are some things that were just delicious when you were a kid, but seem to require effort in these adult years. Cycling in the rain is one of them.

Today, I cycled through the rain on my way home and it was gorgeous.

Cycling in the wind is utterly complain-worthy. Hair in your face, noise in your ears, gale force pushing you wherever it wants you. Anyone who has tried riding a bike up a hill and into the wind has probably gone on to have a bad day in the office if my experience is anything to go by. But cycling in the rain is bracing, exhilarating, fresh, damp. It's like going for a surf in a storm. In your clothes. On a bike.

Mind you, I don't recommend you do it on a busy road. Nobody sees you. Find a bike path in Carlton.

Don't have a bike? Let my friend at Unibicycles pick out one for you: www.unibicycles.com.au

Aaaanyhoo, ringing commercial endorsements aside, bike rides are exercise, and at the end of them, it helps to be fitfully rewarded. At the end of my bike ride, I went for a coffee. I needed to write a few things down before I got on with the writing I had to do, so I ordered a coffee and stared out the window with my pen in my hand.

Rain was bringing people inside. Mothers with small squaking people in prams. Blokes in hard hats. A child with a parent who could have been a grandparent, or a grandparent who could have been a parent. Then, behind me, suddenly, a table full of women. Groups of women, and this is a generalisation, but by God they can talk. Put a group of women together at a table with a cup of coffee and the prospect of rain outside and watch and learn. It's like listening to a Caryl Churchill play.

This brings me once more to my attempt (again) to justify my bad habit (shared with many writers) of eavesdropping in public places around people I don't know. People I do know don't interest me quite so much, because eavesdropping on people you know is usually not very surprising, or else it is terribly surprising, and either way I'm not particularly comfortable gaining such information via covert surveillance when (presumably) I could just have a conversation with said acquaintance and be done with it. Eavesdropping on people I don't know, however, feels like a lesson in writing, in narrative, in the formation of an argument. The lack of context (who ARE these people?) is a useful lesson in storytelling. Sometimes, I find myself madly scribbling things down as I hear them. Expressions, opinions, interruptions.

Today, I heard:

- He left a note, apparently.

- A note?

- On the kitchen table.

- Wow.

(Coffee machine)

- Gone home to live with her parents.

(Coffee machine)

- Unpaid leave, isn't she?

- Yeah, I knew that.

(Coffee machine)

- Position becomes available, I've told them I'm interested in...

- What did they say?

- They can't promise me anything but they'll keep it in mind.

- Hang on, I don't get it. He left the note asking her to move out, she got the note, she moved out. The last time she came in to work was... When did they...?

(Group realisation):

- Aaaaahhh!

This is the moment when, at the next table, I feel like turning around and saying WHAT? WHAT, AH? AH WHAT? WHEN DID THEY WHAT?

But that's the beauty of it. I know nothing. I know nobody. I just listen to bits of something and pick out which voice is interested in a new job (character motivation), which voice is friends with the girl in question (alliances within the story), which voice doesn't know anything but wants to be friends with the others (character status), and which part of the table is silent (silent characters are usually the powerful ones). As I leave the cafe I try to get a picture of these women in my heads, but by now they're talking about something else, and the two men at the table within earshot are loudly talking about whether the Brownlow medalist will reconcile with his father, so I can't hear anything anyway.

Then I ride my bike home in the rain, wondering about someone's partner leaving a note in their kitchen. All in a day's work.