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Yes Max. Thanks to yours and Pat's eyes, I have cut 20 - 30 words. Perhaps you are right about the accretion too. It's a pile but not yet fully layered. Bill On 11/12/2013, at 9:56 PM, Max Richards wrote: > lots to enjoy here for me, > despite the feel after a while of almost superfluous accumulation - > > and I expect Doug to weigh in about economising. > > Prosy bits? eg, > Remove your hand eventually to Nicky's consternation. > Maybe there was urgency to get it all down, and the fulness can be a virtue. > > Max > > > On 11/12/2013, at 7:39 AM, Bill Wootton wrote: > >> Bendigo >> >> Brother Dan and I played the car game >> in the front yard at Lucan Street: we'd run along the top >> of the four-foot high two-tone red brick front fence, stopping >> when we reached a raised brick pillar. The two taller ones at either end, >> marking neigbours' boundaries and the two highest, sentinels of the front gate, >> were agreed safety zones. You had to be standing on one of these four and stock still, >> when a car drew parallel with you. If caught on a section between the pillars, even on either >> of the two intermediary low pillars, you lost. Otherwise it was a game of constant motion. Keeping the Bendigo blues at bay. Estimating approaching car speeds, risky running, brinkmanship in the afternoo >> n. >> >> Lucan Street, down from the Bendigo Base Hospital, >> our Grandparents' place, Dad's parents. Elm tree lined. >> Two cars, three at a pinch, nosed to the gutter between trunks. >> Raked up fallen elm leaves ignited right there on the road >> at the base of trees. Smoke winding up bark. >> Trimmed roses either side of the curling concrete path >> to the fly-screened front porch where milk, bread >> and later, meals-on-wheels were door-delivered. >> Enter through one half of the glazed double front door, >> proceed across carpeted hallway towards the kitchen door, >> see the carved cuckoo clock on the wall. A box of carpet bowls, >> Henselite, on a mahogany hallstand. Turn right, bathroom >> of scalds ahead, now left, through spare bedroom to sleep-out. >> Place of wooden wonders. Trains, skittles, Bobs game. >> Like billiards for midgets. Set up Bobs in dining room. >> First get brown car rug from Grandma. Spread it out, >> pattern-side down on the dining table. Place Bobs set at far end >> of table. Unfold the Bobs wings. Using wooden cue as ruler, >> mark with white chalk the shooting line. Lean over, >> take cue-aim at Tom Bowler-sized wooden black ball. >> Propel it at the kitty, a golden ball, hoping to ping it >> into a high scoring arched hole, preferably >> with a loud thwack on the backboard. >> >> Outside, Nicky, black and white border collie in her large square dog enclosure. >> Reach over the top and tickle-pat the top of her head and she'll almost hum >> with patient enjoyment. Remove your hand eventually to Nicky's consternation. >> Walk on cracked concrete by Grandma's fernery, past the sandpit, past the tomato patch, >> the length of the full-sized cricket pitch where Uncle Charlie got head-bopped >> when he played a leave, forgetting the only keeper was a fast-rebounding concrete wall. >> An axe-softened chopping block in front of the woodshed in the far corner. >> Turn back - mind the woodchips - now pumpkins on your left, cross >> the grassy driveway to the chookshed. Raise first one, then the other, >> hinged wooden flap, checking for a warm egg in straw. >> With or without egg, continue across verge, under apricot tree. Listen. Maybe there will be >> glasses chinking next door over the high creeper-saturated concrete fence. The Michelsons. >> Buick drivers. Party people. Climb, if you feel like it, the apricot tree, grab a quick look over the top. There's the door. The overgrown outhouse entrance, Grandpa once told you, >> to the wartime tunnel leading under their house and all the way under this house >> to a cellar in the old malthouse on the other side. >> >> Bendigo, City with Go, slogan on the new cardboard milk cartons. >> Huh, no go, said Dan, no CITY, said me. But it was a place. >> >> bw >> 11.12.13 >