Sunburnt Speculations

In 2017, Colleen and I moved from Hobart to Melbourne. We were living in Richmond, Tigerland! At about that time, I came across a wonderful Twitter account, @121_words and began to experiment with writing some twelve-word stories, which, now that I look back at them, were a reflection of how we were adapting to our new neighbourhood. I’ve gathered some of them here to remind me of what I was thinking at the time.

Letter box library beckons

from the hurry-by street.

I lingered there.

Walking up Church Street to Bridge Road, you pass three church buildings- a Roman Catholic church, an Anglican church, and a UCA church. The thing that struck me about them was that they all seemed to be built out of the same stone. Now I could be wrong about that, but that’s how it looked to me. And from what I could tell from our Easter visits, the congregations seemed to have a sense that they were working to a common purpose. I liked that.

This photograph is taken just outside the Uniting Church of Australia building. From memory, the rainbow banner said something like, “Church … but not as you know it.”

Outside the church, on the street, there is a perspex “letterbox library”. You might be able to make it out in the bottom left corner. It’s a bit blurred in my photograph, I’m afraid. It operated on an honesty basis. You could come along – didn’t matter who you were – borrow a book, put it back, or a different one. It seemed to say, “Stop a while. You are welcome here”.

I liked that, too.