Work in Progress Archives > Parnassus On Wheels

06/09/201812/11/2018

Kalliope

Not much is really known of the eldest girl with the sultry voice and the ink-stained fingers; whether she was a decent dancer like her other sisters; whether she could truly hold a tune in her throat or her belly, or perhaps she just moaned the forms. Was she tightly frog-faced, or just splendidly beautiful? Did she dress clumsy in ash-stained rags or the richest silks, or simply in cotton? But it seems she still snared her share of would be admirers: her classicism, those clean white marble images, professions of dying and undying love; rhythms and rhymes: she had it all.

19/08/201827/08/2018

Nowhere in Particular

Three hundred or so dusty red kilometres up the Western Highway from the coast, and about five kilometres from the turn off to Lizard Drinking, lies the small outback settlement of Yakult. It’s only claim to fame is that it was named by some exhausted minor German explorer who camped there for a few nights while ostensibly searching for the fabled Australian inland sea. Eager perhaps to leave at least some sign that his expedition had passed that way, on departing he reportedly nailed a small commemorative pewter plate to a large gum. “Frederick Grossendum, Yakult, 1863”.

“Call me Jim”, said the barman, as he laid the paperback he had been reading face down on the counter and slipped off the stool to stand behind his bar: “What will you have?” On the wall behind him, tacked in among the dusty spirit bottles, a large yellowing piece of card announced prices for the available fare.

Mike inspected it carefully before he answered: “seeing its eleven am in the morning, we thought we might be able to get some breakfast?”

“Surely” says Jim, “not a problem. It’s not as if we’re too rushed at the present anyway”. He reached down beneath the taps and retrieved what looked like a child’s toy walkie-talkie. He put it next to his ear; there was a sharp click and a crackle and then he began speaking: “Ma, Ma, are yer there?”