Monday morning. The week-end lay dead all over the town. I closed the door behind me. Blithely I descended to disaster and distrust. Stepping over the remnants of the gaiety not yet swept away I thrust my way into the inferno of the department store. My pockets were filled with books and tobacco and a hundred things I have now forgotten. To dun me for money is to drive me out. Bills are the white heralds of disaster. I was looking for a job.
Monday morning. I wanted a smoke. Difficult to get these days, but I have a friend and he in turn has a friend. Believe in the brotherhood of man. My friend works in the department store.
"Hello Paul. I haven't seen you in a long time. How are you?"
I'm fine. Yes, it has been a while. I've been reading. I suppose I had better start blogging again, before it goes out of fashion. Watch this space.
(The quotation above is the opening of Maurice Duggan's Listen to the Mocking Bird, first published in 1948 in Kiwi. It was, of course, Terry Sturm who established, to C. K. Stead's satisfaction, that no story by Duggan appeared in Angry Penguins.)
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