Sydney Stories – 1971 – The Boarding House Queen

Mrs. Barstow (which she insisted on being called) and her husband, Bob, ran their boarding house in Chatswood as a very tight ship. Bob was a tall, tanned, muscular man who rarely spoke and never smiled. He was given to stripping to the waist while keeping the grounds so meticulously that every blade of lawn …

A whole different menu

This short piece was submitted to Six Sentence Story with the prompt word of 'menu'. I’m driving from Washington, DC to Austin, Texas, imagining myself in every American road movie I’ve ever seen, except it’s all happening on the ‘wrong’ side of the road for an Australian. I discover a new level of terror as …

Sydney Stories – 1971 – Bridge to Nowhere

My intended career as a teacher ended two days into my first placement. I was assigned a school in suburban Melbourne in my own area. My first solo class was to enlighten a group of teenagers, including some I knew that were recycling through the system, about the depth of meaning in King Lear. The …

Cultivating art

I’d been invited by friends to an exhibition. Not at a gallery but at the artist’s house. Well, the artist’s parents house. A mudbrick two-storey faux-Gothic number nestled in bushland (note for future reference - mudbrick houses are always ‘nestled’ into their landscape). The wine was served in pottery goblets made by a local ‘craftsperson’ …

Vivid memories

Often Dean would think about what happened to Robbie (well, not often but certainly occasionally; then again, when does occasionally cross over to often? Perhaps ‘sometimes’ was a better choice). Sometimes, Dean would think about Robbie. When Dean was seven (or thereabouts) he would go to Robbie’s house to play. Robbie would have been about …

A Charmed Life

As Max drew closer to Clifton he began to drive more slowly, wanting to savour each image of his new home and etch it into his memory. He had visited once before, on a holiday but today was the beginning of a new life; a chance to be someone other than the Max Taylor he’d …

The Contract – What Kate did next

A while back I posted story called The Contract . It provoked more discussion than anything else I've ever posted and my legion of followers met in a phone box and demanded a follow up. Start with the original or the rest will make no sense. As Kate sipped her tea on the verandah, she …

Anti-social media

You are Gordon Halliwell, editor of the People’s Sun. Can you turn down the lights, I can barely see. But we can see you and that’s the main point. Who are you and why are you holding me here? Where am I? Questions 1 and 3 are irrelevant, so let’s move on to Question 2. …

Mervyn Martian and Edgar Earthling discuss the two syllable obsession

Mervyn: Edgar, in your primitive tribal society, you are an Australian, are you not? Edgar: Correct M: I have been tasked by our linguists to unravel the two-syllable algorithm that separates your people from the standard English pattern, just in case there is anything of value hidden in this anomaly. E: You’ve lost me. M: …

The temptation of Rabbi T.

Rabbi Tannenbaum trudged through the snow and knifing winds until he saw the diner. Inside, he was greeted by an older blonde woman. ‘Cold enough for ya?’ she said, her smile frozen but her eyes taking in every detail. ‘Could I get something to eat?’ ‘Ain’t had no supplies in 2 weeks. How ‘bout a …