Hunting Party (updated Dec22)

Santa’s COMING for us!… Jazzed up number like stumbling over a cliff when you weren’t watching your step, first morning of the return. The shopping district in Melbourne top of Bourke Street was still lagging behind the best part of a month out…Was it only, Santa’s on his way? No, indeed. COMING. Watch out for your neck if the deer by the bend on the river catch you out! Thus far there were only hung boxed installations holding doves, one that had emerged from its cage swinging more freely than the confined. Otherwise discs in three or four colours & plastic vine. The white elongated cages had adopted the popular local form, all properly secured hopefully, unlike the wall that had collapsed on the young Bangla worker out at the site by the Anglo Chinese School. Fourth workplace casualty this month—which made November the worst for the year. In the last week before leaving the great Southern land a chap had been battling manfully in his front yard attempting to anchor his inflatable Santa in Severn Street. Rocking on his black boots, the old guy’s jollity was a little excessive. Formerly nondescript Severn now made a row of neatly painted and maintained dwellings the entire stretch, almost not a single case of shabbiness. Passing through just a couple weeks before there had been the shock of the Halloween motifs sprung up overnight, every second dwelling having the crepe, skulls, masks and bones over the yards, across the windows and along the driveways. Halloween in the land of surf & sun gobsmacking like the straight right the heavyweight champ had delivered the Cuban challenger in Vegas recently.

                                                                                                         Kinex, Geylang Road, SG, 28 Nov 2019