The Old Man
Walking briskly down a street on the fringes of Sydney one early winter morning I noticed a dim light through the window of a rundown grocery store. Why I stopped I couldn’t say for sure except that I was fascinated by what I saw. There was an old man, perhaps in his eighties sitting ghostly still in his chair as he stared far away into space. Why he wasn’t in bed this early morning was anyone’s guess? I wondered why he fascinated me. He looked like my Pappous and perhaps that’s why I was drawn. But this guy had me hooked. Why was he sitting in this store that looked like something from the 1970’s? A store that had stopped in time. The old iced Vo Vo biscuits and boxes of bushels tea covered in dust decades old, on a shelf likely assembled by him back in the day when he was somebody. Why I knocked on the window is beyond telling but I was compelled to know why he sat alone in the dark by his dim lamp. I knocked louder and still he wouldn’t stir. Suddenly his head turns and I almost...