{Hot underfoot.}
To St Arnaud, the place of my mum’s childhood, the four of us went one hot January day. We drove up, we stayed awhile, we drove home. It looked, in part, as I remembered it but my memory is not always to be trusted. It gives way to fiction all too readily. I have woven the various stories gleaned of my aunts and uncles and cousins into one massive ball of tales, and my knowledge of the family tree is suited to my whimsy, shaped by the photos my great grandparents, whom I never met, and my own imagination. It seems both as I remembered and altogether different. I have grown larger and my eyes know different things. The house on the corner of a nearby neighbour looked, when I was young, ripe for exploration and exotic with its dense garden and large palm tree. Today it looks less of an enchanted tangle. It is odd how things shrink and alter until you realise they have not shifted, rather, you have.
{Here is but a fragment of that day. One day in surrounds different too my usual path. The dip in the pool was such cool relief.}
+ After a pause, A skulk of foxes and a husk of hares resumes
