Missing persons alert: 30,000 people disappear

[todayiamadaisy]

I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and was surprised to discover that I was the only person left in the City by the Sea. Only two cars passed me along the highway, heading out of town. No youngsters riding their bikes down the footpath. No busloads of day-trippers in the Fletcher Jones gardens. Even the plaster whale didn't squirt me. I felt like the little crippled boy who doesn't make it into the mountain with the other children in "The Pied Piper of Hamelin". I meant to watch the news to see if there had been recent mass emergency evacuations, natural disasters or alien abductions in south-west Victoria that no-one had told me about, but I didn't get round to turning on the television last night.

Mystery solved this morning when I went to buy the newspaper: "How about Port?" asked the cheery man in the corner shop, as I read the front page about Port Adelaide's victory in the widely-watched football grand final.

"I didn't even know it was on," I told him. He took my money and looked at me as if I were mad.