Chab Gassie

I needed to meet somebody who claimed they could provide information about our prisoner King Cheetah, which has made itself quite at home in our safehouse, but I had to make the meeting in public. I decided to kill two birds and meet them in a dark, crowded place, which was also part of the City of Melbourne’s winter masterpieces: the A Day in Pompeii exhibition in the weird looking building in Carlton.

Have you ever arrived a party and straight away you think it’s awful and you feel like leaving, but you’re not quite sure if it’s just you’re in a bad mood or maybe your expectations were too high, so you stay around and hope that after a few drinks it gets better? A Day in Pompeii was nothing like that. It was definetly awful and they weren’t serving drinks.

Did you know that life in Rome was quite mundane? Did you know that Romans often used containers? And that they made furniture? And ate? And when confronted with a rolling wall of volcanic destruction, they would die? There. You don’t need to go and see this exhibition. The only thing you’ll miss is a handful of artefacts which may or not be authentic – I really doubt the unprotected fresco on display within an arm’s reach of a child was almost 2000 years old.

I did the whole exhibition in under 25 minutes and that’s because it was so crowded I couldn’t go any faster without causing injury to a child. If Mt Vesuvius’s eruption had been as exciting as this exhibition, it would’ve looked like this.

Maybe it was made for primary school kids. I don’t know.

Then I got back to the office and remembered I was supposed to meet a source. I contacted him and said there was a change in plans and I arranged for him to meet me at the fancy bra store on Chapel St because… you know… two birds.