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John Arthur Nichol

  • An unusual stroller crosses Triangle Park. It’s black all over, a sleek racing pod with big, spoked wheels at the back. Struts of metal tubing protect the seat, and micro-mesh encloses it. There’s a brand name, too, normally seen on top of cars racing to catch Australia’s two-minute ski season.

    I saw something like this in Mosman once, but it was red and contained a pair of angry Dachshunds.

  • Two people approach the top of the ramp, a mother and her toddler daughter with a topknot, yellow shorts, white t-shirt and sparkling white, velcro-strapped shoes.

    ‘Yes,’ says the mother. ‘Down.’

    The girl surges onto the ramp with a cackle, hands in the air and giggling as she tears downhill like a runaway clockwork toy, all the way to the bottom where she turns and grins with delight.

    Her mother joins her there and they set off at a sedate pace, walking on the flat. The girl falls over.

  • The Banksia Men at Neutral Bay. Do they remind you of anyone?

    The side of a building facing a square is painted with a mural from the May Gibbs books about Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. The mural shows two Banksia Men (villains, shaped as dark brown banksia pods with arms, legs and evil eyes). One lurks like a spider on a tree branch and another, glancing back the way it’s come, runs with a helpless gumnut baby clutched in its hand, dangling by its legs. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie look down from a leaf in horror. A real tree grows in front of the wall,and there are bike stands.

  • With so many men never-aftered,
    Russia’s looking for more to get shafted;
    But political stuff
    Means there’s never enough -
    Putin’s doubles are not to be drafted.

  • A Red Wall with Shadows

    A weathered exterior brick wall and all its attachments are painted entirely in red, including two metal electrical boxes, one with a flat metal plate above it) and a downpipe beside them. A vertical steel girder is bolted to the end of the wall. One square of bricks in darker red stands out and a line of cement render, also red, wobbles down beside the grider. There are cracks and dark stains here and there, especially beneath the boxes, and shadows.

  • A small boy, quiet but insistent, makes his father stop in the Dee Why Grand. The boy has light brown hair trimmed short, blue jeans and a long-sleeved pullover with blue, red and white stripes. The father passes him a shiny, vicious looking sword that bends in the middle, and the boy reaches up with both hands to slide it down the back of his pullover. First he can’t find an opening, then the sword catches. The father goes back for something they’ve dropped.

  • Coming in from the rain I encounter a banquet in a tunnel. A double line of tables runs down the centre and every chair is occupied by someone talking, shouting, laughing, eating, smiling. The roar of it fills the space and bounces off the walls and ceiling.

    Walking along the line I see that many small groups, unknown to each other, have come together in this white-tiled place between two weather-swept streets, united by their common desire for shelter, warmth and hot food.

  • Rain clatters on metal tables. Staff bang chairs into stacks. Tyres hiss on the road, and the gutters run.

  • The cafe is closing but a brown French bulldog sits in the doorway, looking out at the rain. I pause, and the dog’s face turns to stare at me. It blinks.

  • A vast hair style walks ahead of me, curly and brown, spreading like a river delta. The centre runs lighter, as if muddy foam has coalesced there, and blonde outriders are the debris that sweeps along each bank.

  • A little black poodle, legs like pipe-cleaners, trots along the path.

  • Excluded

    A street corner on a grey day with dreary light, and a big brick building across the road. On a speckled, dark footpath in the foreground, tied to a bicycle rack, is a little dog in a black coat over curly, light brown fur. He’s advanced as far as he can, with the lead at full stretch, and stands gazing forlornly towards the camera. His ears flop down at the sides.

  • For ridiculous, nothing can rival
    Putin’s Great Patriotic Revival;
    Yet there is, as he spake,
    Some existence at stake -
    Russia’s fighting for Putin’s survival.

  • Another Blind Date with a Book: King Street Newtown, Sydney

    A timber stand on a footpath by a doorway, with parked cars in the background. The stand has four narrow shelves, and each shelf holds books facing outwards, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The top three shelves have four books each, and the bottom shelf has two. Key phrases about each book are written on the front, like ‘Career driven vet’, ‘A June Wedding’, ‘Backstreets of Whitechapel’ and ‘War-ravaged Colonel’. A chalkboard above the stand says: ‘Blind Date with a Book!’ with a heart beside it. A “sticker beneath that says: ‘Worried you may have read it? Just bring it back (with the wrapper and receipt) and exchange for another.

  • A boy and a girl follow their mother into the gelato shop, the boy cradling a ginger Pomeranian like an infant in his arms. When they emerge it’s the girl who cradles the dog, but she attempts a mid-air transfer of dog to mother and ice cream to girl. The dog hangs by a collar.

  • A schoolgirl swaps her backpack to the front so she can access it while walking. Her ponytail brushes her neck.

  • With her chignon, sunglasses and slinky dark material, this blonde girl truly is the Hollies' long cool woman in a black dress, all the way down to her white socks and trainers.

    She catches the B1.

  • A thick-chested tank of a man rolls into the gelato shop, his movement fast, light and fluid. He’s tall, with buzz-cut blonde hair and a goatee beard, sunglasses, black shorts and black athletic singlet, white socks and gleaming white trainers. Tattoos bulging on his legs and arms. Before you know it he’s out again, crossing the road with his head thrown back, stuffing pastry into his mouth.

  • A woman with a blue walking stick stops on the footpath, hand to mouth, as if she’s forgotten something. She wears ankle-baring dark blue slacks and a floral blouse, soft shoes, black-framed glasses, and a black baseball cap over short grey hair. A black bag hangs from her forearm.

    She turns, turns back, turns again and walks to the corner. The lights change and off she goes, confident now, not relying on the stick at all but marking each step with a tap.

  • A smallish boy across the road hangs back on his mother’s hand, pulling and pulling. It may be a trick of the distance, but he appears to have a chip packet on his head.

  • ‘Please please please!’ says a young woman outside the gelato shop, squeezing her partner’s chin. She leads the way in, saying: ‘Ya-ah! Look at those cakes!’

  • The red lentils are faceless. Mostly.

    The frame is filled completely with a mix of green lentils and red lentils. It’s a close-up shot and the green lentils all have random patterns of white and grey, with scatterings of little black marks that resemble eyes and mouths. The red lentils, for the most part, appear flat and featureless. So, while the green lentils appear to have faces, most of the red ones do not.

  • Take the Council, it’s yours to enjoy,
    As you murder a five-month-old boy
    In Avdiivka, where you
    Killed his grandmother, too.
    What a brave new world order, Old Boy.

  • So it really is a thing, this blind date with a book.

    Two shelves of a book display against an escalator. A sign in the middle of the top shelf says ‘Blind Date with a Book’. On either side, facing out, are books wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, with a passage from each book written on the outside.

  • A tough woman swaggers past the gelato shop with curled lip, workout shorts and black Guns ‘n’ Roses t-shirt. A glimpse of leathery midriff, if you dare. On a lead behind her, two sweet little dogs smile up at the tables.