1984 School Magazine

CONilN U OUS CRICKET SUNDAY Red room, red, white, room, red, white brown room you come too soon to my notice and you pluck at my eyes but I shield them with g/ass and the sensa tion's dif f erent. I can see the parched ca rpet f rom too many droughts of c/ass time and the dust particles ping off the g/ass but some sett/e and obscure my vision of a clandestine meetin g on a sun ny Sunday morning out in the open playing tennis - but the time! Don't you see the time? Visitors don't come tillten to three, poor, poor pitif ul me Ronstadt never said a truer word; let's all wallow in the glorious s elf -pity'cause visitors don't see me'till quarter to three. Now five minutes here and five minutes there doesn'f mean much to sorne, but to me five minutes here must be acco unted f or,'caLtse on e fine day I'll be acting h^ppy inside as well as o ut and they'll come up to me and say a written report is required of you when f or five minutes you were neither here nor there. To lie, to /ie is only temporary escape because it's been written; because it was written behind c/osed doors, in solitude, not in collaboration, not captured in the sun ny morning when the time was incurably wrong for playing tennis with ffie,'cause it wasn't ten to three. But the parchment tears as th ey sink their eyes in to my statement of written lies, and the little bits f low, and the biS shreds dance and the /ies go up like flies above the sunny tennis court skies, teach them that pries into my own five minutes, mine. 5o Niven's dea d, I loved his books, the paper this morning tells me so. The headlines don't matter, but the Englishman dead! That shocks; he was funny, deadpan humourous man 5o 'Ballymore or Bust' rings through my ears, on the tip of my tongue is B UR ST, but I don't say it and I 'bust' and don't go to Ballymore, ah the self- discipline. You mean the se/f- deprivation 5o I'll work; but once again they intrude, L)nwanted and nosey your sa/t stings; not Ballymore but work, not work but cricket in a nice biS group. "Unjust, unf air", she screams in their faces. They retort "aha, but you played tennis ,with visitors on a sun ny Sunday morning, at ten -thirty instead of a quarter to three why not work in the morning - I meao, you had f air warning". "The impetus was not given on a sun ny Sunday morning, f or working and toiling, even with your wonderf ul warning." And they smile and say cricket is what you will do, and the blame /ies with no one, only with you.

The car comes to a halt, the door of that big, plain building that I almost dread coming back to, are open wide, welcoming yet not welcoming. Feeling lonely and depressed as Iwatch my sister drive awey, lwalk up the stairs. Cirls are screa ming and rLrnning around, like madmefr, sma ll groups having a conversation "How was your holiday, mine was asolutely f antastic !" one says. I throw my bags on t o my bed, dreading the tho ught of unpacking. I greet. my f riends, then rLtn down stairs to ring my best f riend, in sea rch of comfort. Roybn Michelmore. THE NORDIC TEWEL - THE SPECTRE OF AMBER Leftovers, resin, the rejected blood of the tiring body tree, And the syrup drips yiscous down the conifer's bark-like skin, And the blood congeals and the syrup's sticky, hardening in veins, And skin cleansed, dead cells gone from the skin, astringent in disguise, Festering insects wobble in the amorphous globule and down it dribbles, down, drop, des cent, discarded and ant drugged. Dead now. Leftovers, the annals of a history embalmed, of all previous histories, ensconced in a globule; adroitness in its captive ski//s sayes it f rom the resting place of all leftovers - the en riched loam of earthy dirt - the soi/. Solidify and cry death to those held captive in amber. You think it sa d, the sto ry said it died in blood, scorched in resiff, Dow on silken thread. The death is spurned, perishing as this b/oo d f lows along another skin, And the ant has risen in art - Ief tovers now on si/ken thread, lmmortal worthless ant we so much condemn is now become the priceless gem. The bleeding, weeping tree f rom which the blood did f low exists no longer - bequeathed to sn ow. Along the skin it runs, liquid amber, tainted sta/e beer, The cleanser cleansed, the tarnisher's turn is near, To f roth, to f roth it's pured, yet 'tis never clear, Class drained, residu e remains,leftovers always cost you dear. Susan Ieggett xi

+ 4U.s )MN[tt< + A tONELY IOURNEy

The hated voice came over the loud speaker, "All passengers travelling to Roc khampton and then Brisbaff€, your aircraft is now ready f or Boarding!" Tears now fill my eyes and the lump that I have f elt and tried to fight off so many times bef ore, now comes to my throat. My parents kiss and hrg me good-bye, reassuring me that lwillsoon be back home again. I hand my ticket to the hostess, ernbarrassed that / sh ould be crying. "Front stairs please". As I approach the stairs I turn around to wave once more to my parents, who are no more than a blurred vision but I can see them waving back.