White jonquils! I remove the florist’s paper, bury my nose in the curled petals, and inhale. In a flash it all comes back to me—the neat rows of fragrant, tightly petalled white flowers, just visible on their green stalks in the scrubby paddocks of Foreclosure Creek. After a few days the blooms are shrivelling. I crush some petals in my hand. A sour note of decay is spoiling the sweetness, but the Proustian vault into the past is stronger than ever. I am in a sepia documentary. Vignettes of the deep past, the days when Foreclosure Creek Public School and…
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