Yesterday I took Tom and his friend Sean to Haymarket to play Laser Tag, though really I just wanted to get him out of the house and away from the dreaded screen. On the top floor of the shopping complex that hovers above Paddy's Markets there is a games arcade of sorts that accommodates the aforementioned laser game, but also boasts a dodgem cars rink and a great many video and mechanically-augmented games. The journey from Hazelbrook was long and the train was crowded with cheap ticket day-trippers, amongst whom I guess we should have counted ourselves.

At some point we strolled through Haymarket, for the boys wanted slushies, and on the way back down Dixon Street, which we would call the epicentre of Sydney's China Town, there was a hoola-hooping clown. I have often seen him there, elevated on a box, hips gyrating to Chinese electronic folk music. He is the kind of performer who would induce passing adults to describe a small but discernible semi-circular buffer zone, lest they be summoned by his fantastical self. Children have no such compunctions and so, of course, we found ourselves entering the world of the clown.

Turns out that this interesting man is an 84 year old Korean War veteran, whose central hoola-hooping purpose is religious. He was proselytizing for a Korean Church and he asked me to read a passage from a Good News Bible, which I was only too happy to do. And he insisted on taking this photo with Tom, bless him!