She felt every second of her sixty-two years, but was braving it out with parfums de bain and some raggedly applied lipstick whose end result was sad. She felt guilty but was fighting it and this pungent taste was new to a soul that had marched straight and crazed along preordained paths to the emptiness of old age. Remembering the hallway back at Condamine and the forage cap left there in hope of reclamation amid the blue glass baubles and the bead curtains and the recherché sculptures of lost friends. And remembering the garden paths between which she had trodden hopes under foot and the post-office arcades in Brisbane, the bitumen road-strips to the Paradise of Surfers, and along them all the geometric flowers or refuse bins or grass grew like five o’clock shadows. Time had closed in. She watched her vague reflected self claw the glass up with four flaming talons and she followed its course to the bitter mouth, observed clinically the contractions of her flabby neck and the movement of muscle.
What do You think about A Boat Load Of Home Folk (2012)?
