Follow the story back from episode to episode and find its beginning if you want.
Story and illustration by Sandshoe.
Dog sighed, stood and padded across the floor. She was an elegant and thin ballerina on the uneven tiles of slate and each crevass she stepped over. Isobella opened her eyes to watch the quiet leave taking. The ritual at shared first light defined the barrier between them. Dog was bespoke.
Isobella sat up. She heard laughter scattering over rustling leaves and looked down through the window glass to where the hillside torn by the spear of the gully fell into its ravine. On a shelf of the base of the ridge fold opposite, neighbours were gathered on a verandah. Isobella could see their verandah top railing and glimpse the people as the wind moved the oak branches.
In homes built along the ridge by colonial developers, bankers and other invading landholders of Tāmaki, a modern gentry was in residence. The ridge road has remained witness to the domestic grace of the built environment of original bungalows and housing projects that followed. The road engineers followed a rise until past the historic site of St Stephen’s Cathedral their carriageway meets with another ridge and around that corner the modern coffee shops, places and haute couture of well-to-do shoppers, so on down into the tumult of the city of Auckland. We are time travellers. In its other direction back past the Castle’s entrance easement and neighbours the road swooped in a grand gesture like a living entity in an historic flight curve down to a tidal flat and its indigenous trees and ocean and land birds that made it their home.
The Castle built on a landward promontory of the ridge might as well on darkest nights have overlooked the darkest of seas. Its landscape was a south-east valley that had never been a built environment. A bush reserve seemed to stretch to the horizon in daylight. The illusion it and its castle had no other society was shattered only by a spectacle of lightning in those evenings when every star was obscured by cloud cover. Stormy weather made the only change to lifestyle. The windows shook in their wood frames with a ferocity that matched the volume of the loudspeakers of The Busker’s sound system.
Like a true nature’s child
We were born. Born to be wild
Sunrise on a clear morning was a mesmeric light show across the valley treetops. Isobella threw off the bed cover to twist and turn to watch the sun’s gold rays spread across them. She could expect someone would appear on the verandah to watch it most mornings when the weather was fine. She would join them or not standing on the verandah.
The oposite side of the ridge from the Castle falls to Hobsons Bay and the original estuarine mouth of Newmarket Stream. Scholars recount every fishing ground of the Maori had a place name. English names dominate yet the Orakei Basin, place of an adorning, neighbours Hobson’s Bay. The ridge and on its leeside where The Castle’s residents were stirring is base slope of the volcanic cone, Pukekawa, hill of bitter memories.
Big M said:
So, how does ten fit in? Is it ahead of eleven?
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sandshoe said:
I like the idea. There is no need of constraint just because I mailed to the ed. before Episode 11. As well is numbered thus. 10. No need to present 10 before 11. It fits.
It is deceptively lightweight in size. Yet it took me longer to write and shape than any other episode has or likely will. Entirely by the by. The ed. may have spoken. It might be in the waste basket in his office. 😉
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Big M said:
We shall see, like the phoenix, it may pull it’s undies back on, slide out from between the sheets, and entertain us all, ‘shoe style.
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sandshoe said:
I like a mixed metaphor. This one is so obscure it may otherwise have landed in a rubbish basket.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Shoe, I have a degree of red-green blindness. Your illustration is flirting with me !
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sandshoe said:
It’s a Zeuss Error. I’m in early experimental stages developing the test. Check the box. Is the image winking at you. CHECK. Is the image equipped with ESP relative to comparable others or does nothing compare. CHECK & CHECK. Is this test a flirt job with a red-green colour blind (to a degree) satirist. CHECK.
🙂
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Big M said:
I have total anomalous acromacy, so it looks great to me.
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sandshoe said:
There’s always someone with that.
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vivienne29 said:
Nice.
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Hung One On said:
When I was at school Viv I used to get into trouble for saying nice. Regardless I agree.
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sandshoe said:
This is really nice. 🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
Not so much a shoe as a Cinderella’s slipper. Great writing and who would have thought Auckland to be such a fascinating place. Thanks Shoe.
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sandshoe said:
I an so happy you have enjoyed reading this episode; Gez. What is left but for me to hope I can sustain the style. Thank you Gez.
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Hung One On said:
Excellent writing style Shoe. When I become a grey nomad I intend to read the story from start to finish as you would a book. Thank you.
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sandshoe said:
Such a compliment, Hung.
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Big M said:
Are you really grey, or is it just your pubes, Hung?
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Hung One On said:
What are pubes Big and bet you 100 bucks you do not return to this story within 5 days.
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Hung One On said:
Today is day 1
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Big M said:
Pubes, the plural of ‘pub’, obviously!
I’m not reading episode 11, until I see ep 10!
It’s worth a hundred bucks an episode, what with the prose, and the artwork, dontchareckon?
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Hung One On said:
Darn 🙂
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sandshoe said:
Big M, now I’ve the idea by publishing ahead I might create a demand for missing chapters!
I confess but. No need to hold off on Episode 11. Throw off caution. Release your wild child, Big. 10 can in this instance follow 11 as surely as day night. Sadly, not if it’s been given the flick. We will have to wait to discover.
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sandshoe said:
Piglets and our loved although silent witnesses to the always open pub here, thank you for reading my scribble. Unsure about my geography, but we do have a story to tell. Mike Jones.Therese, love. Thank you for putting the yards in to cast an eye over my work and posting it. I am happy.
Please post Chapter 10 some other time when you have a chance, Therese. I think it follows Chapter 11 better than comes ahead of it.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
You’re welcome, our Dear ‘Shoe.
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