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John Arthur Nichol

  • Patience

    Weeds Have Endless Patience

    In the detritus of a gap where big, vertical blue tiles and flat stone pavers come together, a humble weed is growing. Its six broad, green leaves are spattered with grains of sand and dirt, and variously draped with spider web and loose, dark thread. It has the patience to thrive against the odds.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 15

  • A young woman across street waits with a smile and self-wrapping arms. I’m curious to see what happens next when a black car from nowhere slams to a halt and overlays the young woman’s face with the driver’s. Like photoshop.

    The driver is gaunt, sour, glaring and impatient. I spit on her. Like, you know, figuratively.

  • There are glass doors on the corner that used to open into a bank. Now they just reflect what’s happening outside.

  • Two new people are in the cake fridge: a tall girl in school uniform and backpack, and a shorter girl in bare feet, wetsuit and bun. They’re on the other side of the street.

    The tall girl stands with hands clasped beneath her chin and smiles. She may be twisting a strand of hair, or playing with her hat string. The girl in the wetsuit backs away. The tall girl moves towards her. Across the shop, the glass-front counter picks up the girl in the wetsuit backing slowly out onto the crossing, still talking, but she gives a wave at last and turns to run across the road.

    The tall girl gazes after her. She trudges back up to the bus stop.

  • Hovering in the doorway, a black and white butterfly battles the urge to come in for a small gelato. It turns at last with a huge, regretful sigh, and flies away.

  • On a hot, humid afternoon, the woman outside appears to be sitting inside the refrigerated cakes cabinet.

  • The tips jar at the gelato shop says:

    Tips
    R
    Sexy
    ♡

  • A big car stops at the lights outside. From the back seat a small blonde boy squeaks frantically at the shop, and blows a kiss to the woman inside. She laughs. She continues to work as if it’s nothing to do with her and the car pulls away. ‘Tomorrow,’ she says to herself. Smiling.

  • Horizon

    Horizon with Fence and Ponytail

    A street corner with bicycle stands and cafe chairs and tables in the foreground, palm trees across the road and the ocean beyond. The sky is a mass of pale grey cloud and the sea is dark grey and choppy. In the middle ground, on this side of the road, a woman stands facing left behind a pole, waiting to cross the side street; her ponytail spikes out behind the pole and her nose pokes out in front of it. The front and back of her body are on either side of the pole. In the distance, across the road, the timber top of a fence runs along the horizon from the right and dips below it in the middle of the image.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 14

  • Young band-camper t-shirt: ‘I paused my game to be here.’

  • A band camp responsible adult relaxes while her students ransack the gelato shop. Her t-shirt says: Subtitléd.

    I can’t un-see that word. It haunts me.

  • A thunder of hooves as a dozen young teens stampede down from the crossing and swerve, panic-stricken, into the gelato shop. A girl at the end stands awed:

    ‘Oh my god it’s the first time we’re actually in front out of all the band camp!’

  • In the hospital corridor, a woman wipes the doors with a floor mop.

  • A small girl screeches to a chaotic halt on her little blue scooter, one arm wrapped around the pole and her other hand fumbling for the pedestrian button, a foot holding the scooter in place. She has long blonde hair beneath a pale blue helmet, a sleeveless pink dress gathered with black at the waist, and trainers with neat white socks.

    Her mother (daggy Sunday shorts and t-shirt) catches up and fusses but the girl has everything under control, the scooter safe behind with a hand thrown back to steady it, one knee bent and a heel in contact with the deck.

    The lights change. The girl flings her scooter round and drives it forward, push after push to the middle of the road, then coasts down the other side with graceful little toe taps on the concrete.

    Her mother scuttles after her.

  • Girl on a train (disgusted): ‘I was born a goody two shoes.’

  • A tall, tentative, long-haired boy in high school uniform: ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

    ‘No,’ I answer, reeling from shock at such a display of manners.

    He sits carefully, half in the aisle, and reverently opens a pristine copy of the script of Westside Story.

    He reads.

  • Dawn. Three kookaburras sit in a line on Elsie’s guard rail, close together, facing west. They lift their beaks to the sky and laugh.

  • Connection

    The connection you don't want to make

    A horizontal pipe is silhouetted against a sky of dark grey storm clouds. The pipe hangs from a short chain, which in turn is suspended from a metal bracket near the top left corner. The chain and bracket are also in silhouette. The bracket, chain and pipe are part of a low-tech mechanism to warn drivers if their vehicle is too high to enter the space beyond.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 13

  • On the train at Macdonaldtown, a girl stands suddenly and calls to a departing schoolfriend:

    ‘Hitoshi! You got my phone? Hitoshi … Oh my god.’ She sits with her group again. ‘Hitoshi’s got my phone.’

  • A brown sausage dog called Milo crosses the street, pulled sideways by gravity or inclination, then gallops into the gelato shop with a greeting for everyone.

  • The 199 stops at the lights beside Mole Hill, as we used to call it, opposite Warringah Road. Harbord Road veers off to the left, stretching into the distance, and in that distance a figure is running hard towards us through clusters of freshly-released high school students. The lights hold, the bus waits and the running figure powers closer, resolving into a white-shirted, black-skirted schoolgirl with bouncing backpack and a bottomless reserve of determination.

    She crosses the narrow lane with a glance to the right and stands beside us, champing, forced by the very same lights to wait when she needs to run. Then the bus is off again and so is she, running and running, glancing quickly as the bus draws level and pulls away. The stop is only just ahead and the driver must slow down and let her on but he doesn’t. He accelerates. The stop flashes past and we don’t even get a final glimpse of the running girl, or witness her reaction.

    What does it mean for her, missing this bus?

  • A woman stands on the corner with a thicket of curly hair blown backwards by the wind.

  • A little girl and a littler boy, with freshly painted faces, are about to pass by with their mother and grandmother when the little girl spots the gelato shop. She wheels around, bringing everyone to a halt, and makes her tragic pitch to the Supreme Authority.

    ‘Hungry?’ the mother replies as the grandmother turns away and laughs. ‘You can’t possibly be hungry. You had all that food an hour ago."

    They continue on, away from the gelato shop, and the little girl stamps her spotless white sandals on the footpath.

  • Three primary school girls and a smaller, younger schoolboy wait to cross from Many Wharf to the Corso. The middle girl leans forward on a post, as if beginning a ritual. The boy stands on tip-toes to whisper in her left ear, and stands back. A dark-haired girl leans in to whisper in her right ear, and she stands back. The boy starts walking, but returns because the lights haven’t changed.

    We’ll never know what was said.

  • Shiny

    In a lane whose surface has weed-filled cracks, a long narrow drain with a metal grille, and different texture laid down over many years, a black car stands parked. The car’s window and roof are very shiny, reflecting the images of two unseen buildings; the reflections curve and distort with the shape of the vehicle’s skin.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 12