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John Arthur Nichol

  • 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.

  • A woman inside the gelato shop to a woman with a small dog outside the gelato shop:

    ‘I didn’t mean you’re an idiot.’

  • As if by magic, mother and Small Bundle of Energy are again on the far side of the road. Conferring. The mother turns and walks along the front of the hotel, and Small Bundle cartwheels after her.

  • A car swings round the corner and zips past. In the near-side window is a short red haircut and a pale, frowning forehead.

  • At the front of a bicycle, a mini fox terrier sits tall in a milk crate.

  • A mother and her Small Bundle of Energy cross the road. Small Bundle is blonde, in pink shorts and green top, and swings her arm in a circle while enriching her stride with skips, leaps and side-steps. Set free on the footpath, she trials a sequence of arm movements, then hops into a dance routine.

  • A free-range black cocker spaniel says hello then steps back, waiting for his elderly human. At the main road he pauses again, for harness attachment, and when his human is safely secured he trots around the corner.

  • The Water Flask

    The foreground has a shaded footpath, a shaded low wall and three shaded figures sitting on the wall. Beyond, in bright sunshine, is a stretch of pale sand, a choppy surf and dark blue sea beyond the breakers. The sky is a pale, washed out blue. Five figures stand at the edge of the surf, and others splash in the waves. Seagulls in clusters stand at the very edge of the water, facing left. Of the three foreground figures, two are women half turned towards each other, with bags on the wall between them. The third figure sits further along, head bowed as if reading, and is almost in silhouette. Her white bag sits behind her on the path, printed with a design and the word ‘Joyful’. Beside her, on the wall, stands a transparent flask half filled with water. A thick straw rises from the bottom of the flask and pokes up through an angled lid.

  • In Putin’s peculiar obsession,
    He’s an emperor seeking expression;
    As a Nazi who’d like
    His own thousand-year Reich,
    He’s indifferent to words like aggression.

  • This tree’s not going anywhere.

    On a grey day, on a suburban street corner, a high brick wall runs along the boundary. The bricks are painted dull ochre, with crumbling patches of cream cement render over the top. A riot of vegetation springs up behind the wall, and on the footpath in front of it stands a tree, hemmed in by a barrier of very short, very thick brown posts with square aluminium caps. A metal tube runs through all the posts. The barrier appears to have been built to keep the tree in.

  • Two police cars rip like bullets through the intersection, and before you even register what’s happened, they’re gone.

  • A small girl is dressed to kill in a hot pink top, pink and white striped fairy skirt, black leggings and pink shoes. She has long brown curly hair, and a topknot that bounces like a pom pom.

  • In the shade of the Telstra box, a schoolboy sits with his laptop open and a bag between his feet. Behind him, the Tasman Sea is blue.

  • Two parents with a stroller wait to cross the side-street. A small, imperious finger points, and both parents lean right down. With tufts of brown hair blowing in the wind, the child chews thoughtfully on its dummy.

  • A serious-looking older woman, with silver hair in a salon bob, pauses with one hand raised and performs a stately pirouette. Her Miniature Schnauzer looks up, satisfied, and they continue to the lights.