Did something about my SF stories stories... exported #6 into html, using some macros in Word 7.0 (well fuck m$, this is the version between 2.0, 6.0 and 97 - their numbering scheme will approach some semblance of logic in about 30 years, when it all finally becomes clear).
A real delicacy for masochists - when m$ makes html, it's a whole day ordeal to clean it up and bring to normal and usable. Horror. And it's not just me saying so - I later found that everyone (who can and who's disgusted by the looks of it) wrote a tool to purge the beast.
About this time dad gave up on attempts to fix kafeni, a welder could have fun with it summer day till noon. Below the hinges it was all rotten, in vain is it real comfy, low consumption, shifting gears with two fingers. And dad asked his majstor, Saša, the guy who never completed a sentence, is the one he found okay, should he buy it. The guy approved of it. Years later I asked him why did he approve, and his expert opinion was „well I saw that you really wanted to buy it“. Yep, more work for you...
It served quite well for a year. Then the problems started. And kafeni was sold to B.M. from around the other corner (whom we called Sivonja back in VIII2). He painted it white.
One evening Go, Nina and I went to The Walk. Took trabant to dad's, then walked to ruža. While we were passing by 25. maj, Jolpaz came along and walked with us for a while. We all had various noisemakers, mostly whistles, pots or, in our case, coffee tin cans with bunch of coins inside. That was „noise in fashion“, i.e. we were all making noise at 19:30, when the TV Bastille broadcasted its main news, aka propaganda. These days they'd show the boulevard, from tree crowns up, showing the buildings and light poles but omitting hundred thousand people on the pavement.
Somewhere on ruža, while we were making noise under the windows, someone poured dishwater on us, accidentally hitting exactly Nina and me. Reported that to our nearest, and the column stopped, shouting at the guy on the third floor „Is it now the time to wash the dishes? Go watch the news!“.
When the crowd headed downtown, somewhere by the little market someone had a transistor [radio] and played the news from the local, freshly liberated, radio station, and I've also seen their reporter buzzing around our column. Word went around that the mass has gathered tonight because everyone knows there are no cops in town, they've all been sent to Belgrade to get beaten there.
Đinđić spoke on the square, and our new dr mayor and don't know who else. The drummers made a magnificent entrance into the square, ten walking drummers beating solidly, with a thousand people behind them. There were even some bands playing. Dejan Cukić, of course, sings quite well and still doesn't know what to do between songs, as if he's first time on stage. If he toured with the politicians, I seriously doubt that this is the first time he's in front of, eyeballingly, ten thousand people.
Among the new majority of local MPs, on the stage, was the guy who held oto in the elementary, Miloš. He looked odd with his beret tucked low on his head, with everyone else bareheaded... and he looked like he'd rather be somewhere else. Soon he turned out to be the first turncoat, sold for some hefty amount, and the majority was reduced to one.
29-IV-2022 - 15-V-2026