Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Once upon a time there was a little village, situated in a small spot between a tidal river and the ocean. In a noisy world, it was a tiny triangle of peace.

The little town had a little shop and a little pebbly beach. Beyond the pebbly beach, if you walked to head of the river and turned left, there was a large expanse of white, sandy beach. The beach was almost always empty.

In a ramshackle old house just back from the sand dunes, there lived a little old lady.

Throughout her long life, she had lived in big cities and worked hard at a career. She had travelled the world and had loved dearly and passionately.

She had been called back to this little village, the village by both the river and the sea.

It had stayed with her throughout the years; she had never really left it behind. Her dilapidated house was her sanctuary, filled with memories of a long life, well lived.

Every day, the little old lady walked carefully down her steep gravel driveway to the river beach with all its little pebbles and turned left toward the head, where the river met the ocean.

When she reached the river head, she turned left and continued down the white, empty beach.

The roar of the ocean calmed her and the impossibly straight, unhindered line of the horizon comforted her. Here, there was only ocean and sky.

One day on her long walk, she encountered a large German Shepherd.

She was not afraid of the dog. She greeted him by ruffling his ears like an old friend.

They walked together happily to the end of the beach, up through the sand dune track towards home; the house on the hill. As always, it was lit with welcome and warmth.

The old lady walked slowly up her steep gravel driveway. She looked at the dog and he tilted his head sideways. His left ear flopped over at the top and his deep brown eyes were inquisitive.

The old lady ushered the dog inside and he settled himself immediately on the old, fluffy brown mat in front of the warm wood fire. It was almost like he had come home.

The house itself was filled with furniture and ornaments from days long past.

The old lady looked around and saw the skeletons of her past on each antique couch. Whispering ghosts lived in each room. She wasn’t frightened. They were old friends.

She imagined her younger self, naked and curled in the corner of the couch, as if enticing a lover. As she had when her skin had been soft and her eyes had been clear.

This time though, she was beckoning only to the dusty skeletons around her.

She decided to keep the dog.

The old lady and the dog spent many more years together, walking their daily walk and happy in each other’s company.

Finally one day, the old lady found she could no longer walk down the steep gravel driveway. She was too afraid her old bones would not allow her to trudge back up.

The dog looked at her and tilted his head.

The old lady decided to call her neighbour, Jill.

“I need a volunteer,” she said. “Can you please take my dog for a walk? I can’t take him myself and he so loves the beach.”

Jill was delighted the snobby lady from the house on the hill had asked her to take the handsome dog for a walk.

Jill was young and lonely in the cold, isolated little village with its pebbly beach and its threadbare shacks.

The house on the hill stood waiting, warm; its lights burning in welcome.

Her young legs walked easily up the old lady’s steep gravel driveway. She knocked on the glass-paneled door.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

I watch Jane demonstrate. “That looks scary,” I say. “I don’t want to do it.”

She smiles, looks at me quizzically and, is that a touch of frustration? “Sure, it’s pretty sensible to be scared, it’s a pretty stupid thing to do”.

I let the others go first. I watch them intently, their nervous comments and banter buffeting me like hip high surf.

It’s my turn. I wipe my hands on my leggings, take a deep breath and try to remember what Jane said. My hands clutch the bar. I spring up and my feet cross under then flick over the bar. I take my right leg off and behind the bar then stretch it up, straight. Flexing my foot hard, I bring it down slowly so my shins scrape along the bar until my foot lands. I put my left foot behind the bar and stretch it to the ceiling. My hamstring screams as I pull the foot down toward the bar. My butt starts yelling too. I remember to drop my hips and my foot gets closer to the bar. I watch the foot. There is nothing but my left foot. Get the foot on the bar. I repeat this and gradually something gives, until my left foot sits next to my right, the bar resting at the bottom of my shins. Breathe. I take my hands off the bar and, holding on to the straps, slowly, slowly, lean back and down, let go of the straps, and stretch my arms wide until I’m looking up at myself, hanging from a bar by my feet.

I’m hanging, from a steel bar, by my feet.

Oh Jesus I’m hanging from a bar by my feet. Oh shit, that hurts. What’ll happen if I stop flexing my feet, don’t stop flexing your feet, oh God that hurts, don’t stop flexing. Oh shit…

I fall.

Thankfully its only three and half centimetres onto my back on the mat. My classmates cheer. I feel that for a moment and glow.

Jane is enthusiastic. “That’s fantastic, that’s nearly a trick, you’ve got it, you’ve just got to…”

And the glow fades. I focus back on to what she’s saying. Next time I’ll try it without the guiding straps, aim for a five second hang, and walk my hands up the back of my legs to return them to the bar.

I take a deep breath, wipe my hands on my leggings, then walk up to the bar.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Once upon a time there were three men of different sizes who worked at Wendl’s Department store during the depression. Harry, the tallest of the three, was the store manager. He was a mean, burly faced man who always carried a cane. He was known to wave it around should swaggies dare to venture into the illustrious department store. The second man was Samuel. He was a man of medium build who ran the men’s department. The smallest of the three was Frederick the dwarf. Fred’s role was to wander around the store telling jokes about his size in order to entertain the customers. One day, a tramp entered the store hoping to steel a tin of milo from the food department. Milo was the latest drink to hit the food scene and he was dying to give it a go. Unfortunately, Harry saw the swaggie, so he asked Fred to tell him to leave. Because of that, the swaggie jumped on Fred to make him disappear. He did this with such force, however, that Fred disappeared up his arse. The tramp knew he was in trouble so yelled out: “Help, I need a volunteer to pull this short arse out of my arse’’. Because of that, Sam appeared on the scene; he tried pulling Fred out but he would not shift. Harry then appeared and tried working him out with his cane but still Fred would not budge. It was then, that Sam grabbed the latest constipation remedy and forced some dates and senna leaves down the swaggies throat. Before long, Fred, covered in shit, burst out of the swaggies arse. When asked some days later about the ordeal, Fred said “that although it had been a mostly shitty experience, it had also been a very moving one”.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER. 

Once upon a time there was a heavenly garden on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the churning sea. The garden was fertile, green and luscious, with all the promise of new blooms every spring. It was this way until it was bombed to smithereens in the war. The war came quickly but, like most, followed some rise in political and social upset, and naturally and dramatically changed the lives of everyone that lived thereabouts.

Now there is no green dewy grass that the sun shone off in the morning; there is rubble. There had been a small rose garden at one end of the larger shrubbery, which had been one of seventeen year old Thomas’ favourite places to relax in when the world became heavy on his shoulders (just as though he were Atlas). Thomas would lie back between the rows of roses – his colour preference to lie amongst leaned to the purity of the whitest variety – and look at the sky for at least fifteen minutes every day, creating in his mind superheroes and Gods from the cotton-ball clouds above, whilst breathing in the salty sea air that rose up and over the cliff. He lay appreciating the fact that his house even had a garden, and appreciating the roses particularly (as his Mother had informed him that “They are hard to grow in the silty, sandy earth near the beach and exposed to the cruel winds atop the cliff.”)

One day, many years ago, Thomas had just spotted a cloud he could only describe as ‘dog-tastic,’ when he heard a terrifying, long, earsplitting screech from somewhere above. Because of that, he immediately jerked his upper half upright to a sitting position, bending his legs into a mountain for balance. He realised that his left leg had fallen quite asleep (it protested the sudden change of circumstance via a strong bought of pins and needles). Ignoring this, Thomas craned his neck and turned his head to the right to lay his eyes upon the silver fuselage of a fighter jet that rushed fiercely toward him. The menacing sky-fish (as his younger sister called them) dropped the bomb, Thomas’ eyes in a state of disbelief as they actually followed the bomb coming toward him. His brain did not catch up. The plane had dropped its precious cargo, but dropped it in precisely the wrong location, and quite swiftly, killed both Thomas and all the beauty of the garden.

Because of this, the whole house and indeed many of the surrounding houses and gardens and the families that belonged in them ceased to exist in any way that they had previously been known. Years passed and the war raged over the clotted dirt and the broken bricks, the dust taking a human’s perception of eternity to settle, until finally, from the dust and clotted dirt and ruined lives, one small rose bud poked unassumingly up from the brown earth, and that is what is there today. This proves that life certainly goes on in some form, even if there is no audience left to acknowledge it.

That was the story of the larrikin Thomas’ demise, which to you may seem quite simple, plain and uncomplicated. But you don’t yet know Thomas and therefore surely cannot be expected to truly care for him or his family. So I guess I had better tell you just a little more about his life altogether…