Outside, the late summer sun was beginning to set and he felt a cool breeze through the open zipper of his green and brown bush jacket. He looked across the tarmac of the hotel car park, the silent timber yard across the road, wisps of cloud like red hair in a blue stream. Perhaps it was the peculiar crystalline light. Or the eight or so beers he’d managed to tuck away in the short time he’d been there. As he approached the black Super Snipe he feinted, one way and then the next, his hands coming up instinctively clasping an invisible oval. The memory of running barefoot so potent that he could feel the paddock, the soft cold clods, beneath his feet. Then his head filled the passenger side window of the Humber with a pair of ears, a gregarious mouth and dark tousled curls. The heavy door swung open and he slid across the oxblood upholstery and under the wheel. He didn’t care for the poncey hat or the itchy black serge of his uniform, but he bloody loved that car...
Bush Sick Land. Chapter One, p.11