Friday 13 June 2014

Alternative writing space


It’s become a ritual to chase the last of the winter sun each day, said the writer.

It would be the perfect way to end the day by sitting at a tiny table and chair I have set up on the western side of the house. 
It would be perfectly located, the rays of soft yellow sunlight buttering the thick foliage of the overgrown mulberry tree, if only I didn’t have the best house in the worst neighbourhood.

I don’t mind the alcoholics in residency on the top floor of the pub close by, who sometimes roam at night and hang around my picket fence like a pack of mangey dogs. I don’t mind the mysterious people from the green house who rise early to empty a lot of empty glass ware into their bin before disappearing into silence for another twenty four hours. I have no complaint about the meth lab the other side of my tall back fence. 

It’s the people who live down the lane who make me yearn for some catastrophy to strike an end to their most disturbing public performance.

A sinkhole would do it, big enough to take all their cars, their unroadworthy motorbikes, and deep enough that they couldn’t even raise an echo of nasal drone. Adenoidal sounds of "Mate….mate….maaaaa-tttte" all the way down.

It’s the burnouts, they exercise in a fleet of high powered muscle cars made possible by pooled pensions, traveling in both directions of the lane, that annoys me the most. With some rat cunning, some spider sense, some evil spawn connectivity, they avoid one vehicle coming down, from smashing into one coming up the narrow loosely graveled road. 

They’re only a terrible accident away surely, caused by one of them spitting gravel in a wide arc as they navigate the overhanging Calliandra haematocephala sprawling across the corner. 

Perhaps one day they will be distracted by it’s powderpuff flowers, blood red bullet holes peppering stiffened leaves that fold up and close as dead man's eyes each night. 

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