The Ampersand, Issue one April 2021

The Ampersand

&

Short, Sharp & Sweet Stories

Free Monthly Magazine Edition 1 April 2021

& The Ampersand The Ampersand is a free monthly magazine, giving Australian writers the opportunity to share short, sharp & sweet stories.

Whether you read it on beach, ferry or during your lunch break, our stories will transport you into another world.

Get involved: Writers can submit stories between 500-750 words.

Stories can be about anything, fiction or non fiction, from first time writers to professionals, everyone is welcome to submit.

Published authors will recieve a $250 publication fee.

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Australian Creatives need our support, but most of all we need them.

Who are we?

The Ampersand is published by djprojects, a family run, multi faceted, arts business. Basically, we are artists who like to see good things happen. Things like & Gallery Australia, & Fabrication, & Sculpture, & Curation and now The Ampersand.

Submissions, advertising and enquires contact: ampersand@djprojects.net Julie 0417 324 795 www.djprojects.net More information about each author can be found on www.djprojects.net Images featured throughout this edition are by Mark Stoner, courtesy of & Gallery Australia, Sorrento.

The Companion Android Maria Blackman In homes that are set aside for the dying, it is a non-living workforce that provides the human touch.

CARA-c-012, a Companionship Android (Residential Aged care) with updated empathy algorithm, is sent to one of these homes.

CARA, as she is referred to, looks almost human. The residents often mistake her for a daughter, sister, or another young woman that they knew before. CARA understands that dementia causes them to have false or jumbled memories, so her job is to be compassionate above all else.

Ever amenable, CARA demurs to the visiting families. If she understood the phrase ‘turn the other cheek’, she would do so when faced with their anti-android prejudices. Some of the visitors try to ignore the androids, even though there are as many androids as there are human staff. Previous android models were met with hostility and defensiveness from visiting families who disliked the reminder that their parents and grandparents were slowly and quietly dying in these homes. Over the last few decades, the population has aged. Less children, less grandchildren, less visitors. The homes are a place of stillness,

the aging process speeding both rapidly and haltingly towards it final conclusion.

Resident of room 1109, Willa, loves the home’s garden. CARA wheels her there every morning and they sit, Willa in her wheelchair, CARA on a bench. They do not converse; CARA makes small talk in the amiable way that she has been programmed, while Willa sits and stares. CARA knows that Willa has dementia and can no longer talk or do many of the things that she used to be able to, but CARA also knows that Willa can hear her and that she loves the smell of the rosemary hedges and the colour of the flowers, and the garden’s light and air. Sunlight dapples through the leaves of the tree in the centre of the courtyard, an oasis of life away from the turgidity of the home.

Willa’s son visits fortnightly. CARA is usually tending to another resident when he comes. He sits on a chair as if he has not yet been programmed and is unsure of what to do. He talks at her with updates of his life but quickly runs out of steam. CARA can predict when he will leave; he says he has things to do, looks at his mother for a few moments, and then stands up. He stands by the bed for a few more moments, biting his lower lip, then leans down and kisses her cheek with the merest of touches. He says goodbye then exits, eyes forward.

CARA does not have her own emotions to feel but she stores these observations in her AI memory bank. After the son leaves, Willa is agitated. She rambles unintelligibly. CARA’s empathy algorithm directs her to listen attentively and pat her hand. If Willa is particularly distressed, CARA wheels her to the garden and they sit under the tree until Willa is calm. CARA registers all of this, storing and processing it in her memory.

There comes a morning when CARA enters Willa’s room to find her non-responsive. The human staff take over. Willa’s son arrives and CARA tries to read his body language and tone but she is unable to. Willa’s body is removed, the room cleared and cleaned.

The son leaves, not looking back.

Something connects in CARA’s AI cortex. She has other residents that she could tend to but she is unable to on this particular morning.

Instead, she goes into the garden as she would when Willa was

upset. Sitting on the seat that she usually occupies on her mornings with Willa, CARA snaps off a sprig of rosemary. The scent enters her olfactory processing unit, triggering an impulse but what?

Through the window on the other side of the courtyard, CARA can see Willa’s son speaking to the administrator. CARA goes inside and approaches him. She proffers the rosemary but he recoils when he see what she is. He slaps her hand away and turns to gather his things to leave.

The day’s events are accumulating in CARA’s AI cortex but she is unable to process what has happened. Is it because of her empathy node? She returns to Willa’s room and lies down on the bed, now made with fresh sheets, pressing the reset button at the base of her head.

A minute later, she gets up off the bed, leaving the rosemary sprig behind.

Bentwood Desmond Doyle I cannot begin to tell you how angry I am to find myself discarded on a pile of rubbish beside the road. I’m not like those around me—cheap, slapped together, flatpack tosh.

Most find themselves in these dire straits after only a few measly years. I was crafted; a genuine Thonet Bentwood, not some mass-produced dining chair. How dare they end my days in this way?

I am a style icon! It’s me that the cheap knockoffs imitate. Now it seems every house has imposters in mismatch colours around their pretentious dining tables—one white, one teal, one lemon. As if lemon is a colour! Although, to be fair, a fresh coat in a loud colour would be more appealing than my own French walnut in its current condition—lifting and flaking away to dust. To think that something as simple as a light sanding and some oil would keep me from the certainty of what will occur at any moment.

The anger I feel is intense, but it is fear that is dominating my senses; fear of an end that will come in a cold, steel, smelly embrace. A truck is rumbling down the street now and the nervous chatter in the pile builds: Will this be the angel of death? No, the truck doesn’t slow and the only mark of its passage is the dirty film left by the spray of gutter water thrown up by its passing.

A figure is making its way down the street and rummaging among my unwanted compatriots. We all wish for another chance and to be rescued from a gloomy fate. I am as hopeful as the rest, allowing myself to get worked up into believing in another life and another chance to fulfil my purpose. I may be more than 100 years old, but I have so much more to give. I feel sorry for the typewriter on my lap. He hasn’t spoken to me since I pointed out the obvious flaw in his rescue dreams. His obsolescence shouldn’t deprive me of hope, I pointed out, people still need to sit but they have easier ways to print words.

A tattered ribbon hangs limp from his carrier, like a parched tongue.

The silent treatment that is meant to be punishment is a relief from the chatter.

I feel a surge of hope this time, the fossicker is wearing a carpenter’s apron that takes me back to my beginnings—I was built by a man like this. Loving hands caress my legs, turning me over. I will the makers mark on my underside to be accentuated, proof that I am worth salvation. How grubby can it be, how legible? The collection truck is here now, it has rumbled up during my inspection. Not a false alarm this time; I can hear the first of my unwanted, temporary neighbours being loaded into the compactor.

“You want to keep that chair mate?”, the opportunity beckons through a gruff voice.

Despite the woe befalling the others in the pile my heart soars. I can hardly believe it—deliverance from a terrible fate at the last possible moment. My thoughts already filled with the expected restoration that will pamper me back to life. I try to stay calm, not wanting to miss any detail of the moment of rescue.

“Nah, too much to repair” comes the answer.

I am numb, shaken. My heart is as broken as my frame is about to be.

Rough hands grab my back and a leg, so undignified. I can’t think how anything could be worse until I hear the last words I ever will…

“I’ll take that typewriter though.”

Afraid Sarah Howlett I really wouldn’t have expected it. I just thought it was Zac, because he messaged me to say he was coming over. I told him he could come over, and he texted me that he was nearly at my house. So, when I heard a knock on the door and got a message that he was here, I yelled out, “Come in!” because I was too tired to get up. I heard the door creak open like Zac wanted to sneak into my house, although I don’t know why he would do that.

I saw him wearing a strange mask.

It was probably just another prank of his. “Real funny, Zac!” I yelled out sarcastically. No answer. It was definitely a silly prank. “I know you’re trying to prank me, Zac. It’s not so funny, anymore.”

He still wasn’t answering me, but he did stop walking around. He stopped dead in the middle of the loungeroom, and then started walking around the house again but this time he walked towards the room I was in. I was just sitting on a chair in my bedroom, and I was so tired I couldn’t be bothered getting up. So, I just sat there. People would usually say I’m smart, but no-one would say that now.

The man looked at me and took off

his mask. His face was half burnt, with lots of scars. I was scared for a second, because I thought he was just trying threaten me, but then he got out a pistol and pointed it right at me.

I was just sitting on a chair in my bedroom. I should have run away.

I should have left and never come back, but if you knew me, you’d have known I would stay. That I would wait and listen to my heart beating its last beat. I was afraid.

I was terrified. I felt too afraid move.

I couldn’t move a single muscle. I couldn’t continue to breathe normally, so I drew my final breath.

I felt stuck in my chair, like I was trapped. I couldn’t leave my chair.

My chair was fine, my chair wasn’t afraid. My chair couldn’t move either, but it didn’t have a choice, whereas I did. I thought he would leave then. But why would someone just pull out a gun and leave.

He shot me. Right in the stomach.

The bullet pierced through my skin, I pulled my trembling hands to my stomach and screamed - so loud and hard that the man had to cover my mouth so no-one could hear me. I began to bleed - the blood pouring out onto my lap as I held my stomach.

I wondered about some different things as I was dying. I wondered why I made some of the stupid decisions that I’ve made during my life. I wondered why I let someone

in my house without seeing who was at the door first. I know I was tired, but I still should have checked. I wondered if anyone would save me.

My friends would save me, but they weren’t here. The last thing I wondered about was, if I was really dying or had just passed out.

I guessed I would never know, because if no-one was going to save me I would definitely die.

Then I heard the door quickly swing open, so I knew that I wasn’t dead yet. I heard Zac’s voice, and some other voices I didn’t recognise. I heard sirens, which told me there were police and paramedics coming to help me - if they could even help me, anymore. I heard the police tackling the stranger. I felt a tear roll

down my cheek and drip off my chin into my bullet wound. It stung terribly, and I wish I could have screamed, but I couldn’t. I tried to scream so they would know I was alive, but I couldn’t find my voice.

Then I couldn’t hear anything. I was sure that I was dead now. How could I be alive? Then light! I tried to adjust my eyes to it as I awoke.

“Good, you’re okay! You had people worried.” I saw Zac standing near my hospital bed. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” I answered him, trying to sit up. It was too painful to move so I stayed laying down. I was only fine if that man was locked up, because I don’t know how many others he’d injured, or killed…

The Next Chapter Anna McEvoy I wait anxiously at the cinema, scanning the crowd. I don’t know what my date looks like. We met in a book, you see.

I’d taken my time with the borrowed book, savouring each page and marking my favourite passages with blue sticky notes. I was only halfway through when it was due back at the library, and I couldn’t renew the loan because someone else had it on hold.

‘But who else even knows about this book?’ It was an obscure title I’d found tucked away on a dusty shelf.

The librarian smiled. ‘Perhaps it’s serendipity.’ I rolled my eyes but she smiled again and handed me my library card. ‘I’ve placed it on hold for you. You’ll get an email when it’s available.’

The librarian trundled away with the book in her cart before I remembered all my blue notes. They were harmless but I hoped they didn’t bother the next reader.

I put it out of my mind until my inbox pinged with the library email advising my hold was available. I collected the book; my blue notes

were all still there, along with new yellow ones. My fellow reader had also only made it halfway through, and left a final note with a handwritten message: Over to you, Blue.

I smiled, despite myself. I only read one chapter—it didn’t seem right to keep them waiting. I added my own handwritten note before returning the book: Enjoy, Sunshine.

I didn’t have to wait long for my turn again. This time the yellow notes included a personal anecdote, just something interesting about their day. And this was how we got to know each other, one chapter at a time, sticky note by sticky note.

With two chapters remaining I grew anxious that the end was near. With one chapter left I panicked and left a blue note: Tell me a secret, Sunshine.

I wanted something of them to keep for myself after the book ended. It was silly, really, but so was their response: I don’t like Shrek.

I laughed. The note continued: Don’t laugh! This unpopular

cinematic opinion has ruined more than one dinner party. I don’t share it with just anyone.

Below it, another yellow note: Tell me what scares you, Blue.

I’d planned on writing something witty, but when I finished the final, emotive chapter of the book, I was inspired to spill my true feelings instead: I’m afraid that when the book ends, we end.

Underneath, I added: By the way, I haven’t even seen Shrek.

I returned the book and placed a final hold.

I raced to the library when the email came and flipped straight to the end of the book. Two movie tickets were tucked inside with a single yellow note: Good. Let’s go see a real movie.

So here I am, wearing my favourite blue shirt, clutching our book, trying to look sure of myself while I’m not even sure who I’m looking for.

I see the yellow shirt first, then the smile.

I smile back. ‘Hello, Sunshine.’

In The Studio with Mark Stoner Julie: Mark how long have you been creating?

Mark: I first went to Melbourne State College and did an Art and Craft teachers course. I had never done any art prior to that. It was the best art school, the lecturers seemed to have no idea that it was a teachers college. And they thought they were all ‘art stars’.

That all started in 1975.

Julie: You started as a ceramicist but moved to sculpture and now drawing and painting tell us about that progression.

Mark: As a student of ceramics in the 70s I was completely seduced by the ceramic sculpture coming from the American West Coast.

So I, along with others worked to emulate this practice. Inevitably I ended up embroiled in the ‘art craft ‘ debate. Essentially, an argument by artists (sculptors and painters) that craft based work (ceramics) wasn’t ART. I already saw myself as a sculptor, working in a fluid world of ideas and output that was not driven solely by a technique that I was good at. I have fortunately been commissioned over the years to create a number of large public art sculptures. In recent years I have been happy to work on smaller sculptures in a smaller studio.

Along with this work has been a developing interest in drawing and painting. It fits well into a smaller, home based studio.

Julie: You taught for many years, was it beneficial to your practice to be around students all the time?

Mark: I did really enjoy my teaching and just being part of the bigger world of art practice. Being with young people for so many years has kept me engaged in new ideas and younger thinking. They challenged you, perhaps not directly but you had to reflect on your own practice. There was also the exchange with teaching colleagues which was always interesting.

Julie: Tell us about your exhibition now on at & Gallery ion Sorrento.

Mark: Over the last few years I have not been seeking large commissions. I have very happily concentrated on smaller, studio work. I carve stone and have been drawing/ painting. Since Covid I have been almost solely working from my home studio creating works on paper. So these works for Flow emerge from my life long preoccupation with the movement of our world. My experiences of wind, water, landform, geology, maps and charts, the list can be endless.

But simply put I love the curve of it all. The continual squirming and twisting.

Mark Stoner’s exhibition at & Gallery Australia 18 March - 12 April 2021 163 Ocean Beach Road, Sorrento, Victoria www.andgalleryaustralia.net gallery@djprojects.net for catalogue

Telling Lies D. W. Walker Kathy glanced away from the live coverage on the dedicated Royal Commission channel with a smile.

"What I love about party machine men is the way they think that the numbers justify the means," she said, "even if what happened is ancient history. Provided, of course, that it's not their history."

On screen, Counsel Assisting was grilling a squirming former Prime Minister. "Is it true that you told your first lie at three, when you denied ripping off the head of your sister's doll?"

"I have no recollection of the incident," the former Prime Minister said. "If the doll wasn't covered by a warranty, then it was obviously a bad buy."

Counsel Assisting persisted. "Is it true that, at age twelve, you volunteered to divide a punnet of strawberries fairly among the members of the family, but when one was left over, you ate it yourself in secret?"

"That is clearly not correct. Punnets, boxes of chocolate and buckets of chips always come with exactly divisible numbers of items.

I have proved that through successful management of such sharing

operations over many years."

"Is it true that, at age eighteen, you falsely attributed a large scrape on you father's car to an incident in a car park while you were not present?"

The former Prime Minister scowled.

"I am finding this line of questioning to be both intrusive and offensive, as well as irrelevant. What is the source of your so-called information?"

"You are a believer in an omnipotent, omnipresent God that keeps extensive records of even the most trivial thoughts and acts, so that He may make a final judgement upon you, are you not?"

"I am not sure that I would phrase it in exactly that way."

"Has it never occurred to you that such records may, on occasion, be strategically leaked? Or do you see the Supreme Being as being subject to some Divine Secrets Act?" Sue gazed up at the screen, puzzled. "Why are they grilling this guy, now he's been dumped. But then, why on earth did he ever set up a Royal Commission into political lies in the first place?"

Kathy smiled. "That was us. When you've got a hung parliament and you're desperate to find a few extra votes, you'll agree to all sorts of

wacky proposals from your target minnows. They saw this as a good way of discrediting the opposition. They appointed what they saw as a totally partisan commissioner, even though we'd recommended her. They thought she'd get stuck into the opposition over all their lies and broken promises. She has, but she decided to apply the same standards to both sides, which is why it's so much fun."

"But aren't you going to be in the firing line too? You must have made an election promise some time?"

Kathy grinned. "Lots of them. But they're all aspirational. Aspirations may not necessarily be achievable, but they're not lies.

The Commissioner is well aware of that.

That's why she got the job."

Dye Belinda Oliver I didn’t like her the moment I met her. She thought she was better than me, I could see it in the way she looked down her nose at me, the way she barely made eye contact and in her limp handshake.

The fact that she planned to knock down the house and rebuild made me dislike her even more. This house was special, I wasn’t going to sell it to just anyone. It definitely wasn’t going to her.

‘You have to disclose if anyone’s ever died here, don’t you?’ she asks, twisting a large diamond earring in her earlobe.

‘I do, yes,’ I say after a brief pause, hoping she thinks I’m uncomfortable with her question. I normally hate it when prospective buyers ask this, because you can guarantee that if someone has died there, there’s little chance of the sale progressing. People don’t want to live with the ghosts of strangers.

‘So…has anyone died here?’ she asks again. She studies my face, her head cocked to the side, searching for any kind of hint that I may be about to lie to her.

This is it, the moment that I’ve been waiting for. Now the ball’s in my

court. ‘There is something I should show you,’ I say, motioning for her to follow me. We walk to the bedroom at the front of the house and I stand back, letting her enter first. Dappled sunlight streams in through the window but the room still has a slight chill in the air. She stares at a photo on the mantelpiece of two boys laughing, a lady sitting between them, holding them tight.

‘So…what is it?’ she asks, craning her neck as she looks around the room. I point to a frayed cotton rug in the middle of the floor.

‘There’s no official record, but there are rumours that something took place here about twenty years ago.

As I say, it’s unconfirmed,’ I make sure to emphasise. I bend down and pull the rug back towards me, exposing a large dark stain on the pale floorboards.

She leans down slightly to get a better look, gasps and takes a step backwards. Her dark eyes dart around the room, searching for any other clues that something sinister might have taken place in the room.

‘Like I said, it’s only a rumour, but I do still like to disclose these things.

Well, I think it’s the right thing to do, anyway.’ I smirk to myself as I push the rug back into place and stand up.

‘I can’t live here knowing that,’ she mutters, shaking her head. ‘I mean, I’d be demolishing and rebuilding, but still…’

I don’t say anything, taking secret delight in her uncomfortableness.

This is the part where I’m supposed to try and encourage her to look past it, to do anything to get the sale. Not today.

‘Of course, I understand,’ I sigh, pretending to be disappointed and offer to walk her out. I wave her off, smiling as I remember how angry our mother was when I tipped her precious red food dye onto the freshly varnished floorboards in my brother’s room.

It was early one Saturday morning while she and our father were still asleep and we’d gotten bored of wrestling one another. We’d lifted her cake decorating tin down from its spot high up in the kitchen cupboard, knowing it was where she kept all the special coloured dyes

that we weren’t supposed to touch.

My brother said we could paint some pictures with them, so I’d snuck the tin back to his room while he went to find some paintbrushes.

I’d twisted the lid off the red bottle first, but it had slipped out of my hands and onto the floor, leaking crimson dye everywhere.

We’d tried to wipe it up with my brothers pyjama pants, but the more we’d tried, the more we’d smeared it over the wood, leaving a large patch of dye that had darkened over the years, looking like someone had lost a large amount of blood there. Mum had been so angry. I can still see her now, standing there in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, her blue eyes wide in disbelief.

Just before she’d passed away, I’d promised her that the house would go to the right person and I couldn’t help but think that right now, she’d be so proud of me for spilling that dye.

Inoculation run Ron Addenbrooke The year my seventh birthday rolled around, my brother left us for the angels. At five it was early, way too early. And four brothers would never know the joys of growing up with Vincent.

Yellow fever had possessed him, and that, with double pneumonia, took him.

The strange thing is, I do not recall how I felt. Was he missed in those early days? The fact that four brothers played where there use to be five, did we notice? Though I cannot recall I'm sure he was missed. And yet so vivid in my memory was the needle that we were expected to accept without tantrums and without escape.

"Ronnie!" My mother called from the house.

I knew it was my turn. I had seen my brothers exit in tears, I had heard their bellows of indignation and had planned my route. I was going to be strong; I was going to be brave; I was going to stand tall in front of my brothers and...escape.

"Ronnie!" My father was on his way out the back to collect me and I knew I would not stand a chance once I was held.

Off the veranda and across the tufts of dying grass I fled. A dodge to avoid the tomato bushes, a skip to my step and I launched myself.

My toes hooked the bottom rail of the picket fence and with the agility of a cat and the fear of a thousand hells storming upon me I thrust my backside up and hooked a leg over the top pickets.

I was a roll away from dropping to the other side and obtaining my freedom when the wedgie I felt was accompanied by a collar scruff. I was hauled indignant, kicking, and screaming to the Doctor whose grin did not dispel the fear or the glint of the huge needle he held...Doctor Frankenstein, I presume.

I do not recall where he emptied that syringe, nor do I really care.

So what if they were trying to save my life and avoid the remaining four brothers becoming three or less.

What right did they have to implant such fear into the memory of one so young? What right indeed?

I thought as I chewed on the jellybeans given by the Doctor and grinned at the brotherly recognition that I had almost made it...for that fleeting moment I had almost won gold.

‘I can’t live here knowing that,’ she mutters, shaking her head. ‘I mean, I’d be demolishing and rebuilding, but still…

The torment of that day returned to haunt me every time a needle pricked my skin. In bravado, I would still my legs from running, hold down the fear building within, squint through the tears and clench my teeth through the pain, and step back upon completion to faint...

It got so a young lad's dignity could only be saved if he lay down at the outset. First in line and first to lay down! But I learned you could outgrow anything; every childhood fear can diminish with age.

I still wonder what it would be like with Vincent to share our lives.

Would I have still fainted from the myriad of injections we well-travelled kids had to suffer? I would have lost this memory if Vinnie were still alive, but I would have gladly replaced it with others.

You pick (b) Zena Shapter It’s 5.40pm on a Friday afternoon and you’ve just finished cooking dinner, when your eight-year-old son complains that he can't do his maths homework because his finger hurts. He bent it ‘funny’ during Eagle Tag but didn't think to tell you until now. Do you: (a) tell yourself it's just badly bruised and leave it to hubby to sort tomorrow while you're teaching, after all dinner is ready or (b) phone your local medical centre to see what time their x-ray department shuts.

You phone the medical centre – their x-ray department shuts at 6pm, which is now in fifteen minutes. They recommend you go to the hospital. From experience, you know that going to the hospital with a suspected broken finger will involve a five-hour wait (because it's not a terrible emergency), so you ask the medical centre if they can splint fingers. When the receptionist tells you to 'just go to the hospital', Do you: (a) go to the hospital or (b) explain that a five-hour hospital trip is not in the best interests of

your young family, especially when their x-ray department is still open, and you will have your six-yearold daughter in tow. So please just answer the question.

You pick (b) and yes they can splint fingers, though doubt you'll get to x-ray in time. Since you don't drive, they're probably right but you “can” walk to the medical centre in fifteen minutes. Do you: (a) get walking (b) phone a cab or (c) phone the neighbour who is always telling you to ask if you need a lift.

You pick (c) and your neighbour just so happens to be pulling up in their driveway at that very moment.

You throw everything you've cooked in the fridge and get a lift to the medical centre, arriving at 5.50pm.

There’s a queue of five people waiting at the reception desk and three receptionists all dealing with one person. You walk past the queue, apologising, catch the eye of a receptionist, and explain that you need to see a doctor ASAP, because the x-ray department is about to shut. The receptionist says she just sent a woman to the hospital for that very reason. You ask if she also had a suspected broken finger. No, she had a suspected broken wrist, so the same thing.

No, you say, a broken wrist needs a cast, a finger needs a splint and

splinting can be done here. The receptionist doubts you’ll make it in time.

Do you: (a) remind them you can see the x-ray department from where you're standing (b) tell them to simply print the form so a doctor will look at your son's finger because it's now eight minutes until x-ray shuts (c) explain that because it's a suspected broken bone, your son can go straight to the treatment room and be seen by a doctor immediately or (d) all of the above.

You pick (d), take the form printed begrudgingly by the receptionist and hurry around to the treatment room, calling the x-ray department on the way. When you phoned the medical centre earlier, you heard that radiology was “option 1” on the phone menu. Your call gets put through to hold music. In the treatment room, a smiley nurse has just finished with a patient. There is blood everywhere. She starts cleaning up, so you explain that the x-ray department will close in five minutes – could she please call the doctor so he can sign the form to authorise an x-ray?

Alternatively, the doctor may say it's just badly bruised. But the option to have an x-ray (without a five-hour hospital wait) will expire in five minutes. The nurse is more than happy to call the doctor. Meanwhile, the x-ray department answers the phone. You explain that you are in the treatment room and may need an x-ray for your son, but they are about to shut. A lovely man says that it’s not a problem, he will wait for you. If you don't appear in five minutes, he’ll even walk around to find you. The doctor then appears and immediately agrees an x-ray is needed.

You walk around to x-ray while the doctor prepares the necessary form.

You get the x-ray. You get the splint. Your neighbour gives you a lift home. You take dinner out of the fridge to reheat, and notice you have vodka in the fridge but no orange juice.

Do you: (a) go without or (b) use one of the kids juice poppers as a mixer.

You pick (b).

&

djprojects & Fabrication

Design, Structural, Architectural, Sculptural Derek John is a steel fabricator by trade with over 35 years experience in a wide range of materials.

He offers services of fabrication in structural & architectural steel working with architects and builders across Victoria.

He also assists artists in achieving public art outcomes, handling small and major projects including pricing, submissions, project management & installation.

derek@djprojects.net 0418 535 423 www.djprojects.net

& gallery Australia

Contemporay Art Commissions Public Art Private & Corporate Consultancy

163 Ocean Beach Road, Sorrento, Victoria gallery@djprojects.net 0417 324 795 www.andgalleryaustralia.net Thursdays-Mondays 10.00-5.00pm