Trail of Ants

Some years ago now, I was in my bedroom doing what any eight year old would do. I can’t remember exactly what that was. My guess is I was diving into the trench between my bed and wardrobe to wrestle a time-travelling German soldier, but I can’t be sure. I can’t even be sure I was eight. What I do remember was a young Australian boy, of similar age walking into my room and giving me a shiny gold coin with a picture of a kangaroo on it, for which I gave him a dull silver heptagon (a fair exchange rate). That day, his dad (but I can’t be sure it wasn’t his uncle, or even the German soldier) gave me a yellow plastic boomerang. For weeks to come I was found in a nearby field hurling that foreign Frisbee around. I sent it into the parallel universe and watched it weave its way across the Cambridgeshire Sahara, slashing a Martian’s middle ankle as it went, but I never did catch it. In the years that passed, a small koala bear appeared and grabbed hold of my lampshade and I received some airmail (very exciting for my age), it was two more boomerangs, made from wood and engraved with wondrous depictions of Australia, The Southern Land. The boomerangs hung to my wall overlooking my adolescent years and the koala, well, he’s probably still gripping that lampshade and blinded by dust. And me? Well, I defeated the German before bedtime, and now I’ve made it to Australia. Continue reading ‘Home and Away’