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Sport 33: Spring 2005

Holidays at my father's

page 77

Holidays at my father's

We drive down Fenton in a bench-seat Holden. Belmont glints in Times New Roman. Motels and hotels fill our vision: Sequoia Tree, Sulphur City. Hell's Gate Lodge.

*

We eat black pudding for breakfast. We eat tank bread for lunch. We play Yahtzee on speckled brown carpet, rolling dice over a woollen landscape.

*

Anne owns an ice-cream parlour. Twenty-three favours, the most in town. Roll them so they're hollow in the middle, she says, and I can't get over how clever this is.

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Men play golf among steaming vents. The dashboard skids with fags and mints. There is a hornet at my shoulder.

*

Don't tell Anne we stayed with Barbara, he says. Not that I would ask you to lie for me.

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Anne likes my tracksuit. She positions herself at my side. Thank you, I say, my mother made it.

Your mother made it, she says. Isn't your mother clever?

*

The geyser bursts at ten o'clock. A man stuffs the hole with suds. Sometimes I fly there, sometimes I'm driven.