Short stories
Here are a few short stories, some published, some not.
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Hard copy, big picture – nostalgic for maps
A state of ennui sets in, and we decide we need to quit the city and stretch our vision to a far horizon. Just for the day. It is all the time we can spare this...
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Vale the Vulcan, god of fire
A bright Queensland spring day in 2011. I sit hunched next to Dad, keeping vigil as he slowly succumbs to his death. I gaze across a wasted body, a scraggy 45 kilos of flesh and bone...
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Tomato hunting
Thanks to El Niña, the drought developed a vice-like grip on the island and fresh fruit and veggies were in short supply. Most days there was not even a solitary puff of cloud on the horizon...
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They still call England home
My husband Brian is a Bajan. A Bajan? This is the tag the population of Barbados, an idyll in the Caribbean, give themselves. As Brian tells it, ‘Barbados is a cliché: a tropical island, fringed by...
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The Milton crush
The carriage is packed from Indooroopilly, standing room only. Gaggles of school girls flock on at each successive train station, coolly ignoring the boys from Grammar and Terrace who shuffle awkwardly from one foot to the...
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The Apple Room
“Listen,” Brian said, “Fleetwood Mac, ‘Albatross’, do you remember this?” He turned up the volume. The spacey ambience of the music enveloped us in the dark confines of the car. The regular, hypnotic thrumming, reminiscent of...
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Brambling, rambling
England, autumn, blackberrying time. Time to head out on still-warm, golden autumn afternoons armed with boxes and bags, colanders and bowls, just as the fruit swells to perfection in glorious purple-black bobbly globes, and before the...