Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Author: Vin Maskell

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The crossing guard and the dawdler

    • Vin Maskell
    • 01 February 2012
    8 Comments

    He'd pick up sticks and stones, turn them over, put them in his pocket. He was often the last to cross, arriving as the school's public address system played 'hurry up' music at 8:55am. Some people laughed when I said I'd become a school crossing supervisor, but they don't see the things I see.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Alzheimer's erosion

    • Vin Maskell
    • 12 October 2011
    9 Comments

    'I've been looking after Vera since 1996. I wasn't going to stop because of glandular fever.' Clyde and I talk sport and the weather but Vera's always on his mind. 'Her memory's gone. I only ask her one question each day. I say, Who's your best mate? And she looks at me as if I'm stupid!' 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Record store pilgrim

    • Vin Maskell
    • 11 May 2011
    5 Comments

    Once, I soaked up so much music it seeped from my pores. A week wasn't complete without buying a few albums, seeing a few bands, talking music with mates until dawn. Now I wonder if my weekly pilgrimage to a city music store is merely a break from the working day, or a respite from fading dreams.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Where children used to play

    • Vin Maskell
    • 09 February 2011
    4 Comments

    After she died — her mind went first, then the rest — he moved across town, where he lived in a different type of street. A busy street with traffic and noise. No place for a street party. Once a year, though, he returns to see the next generation of neighbours. New leaves on old trees.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Swimming in ink

    • Vin Maskell
    • 17 November 2010
    7 Comments

    He is out there, a fellow water man, in the real dark, in the blue-black ink. I am just here in the shallows, for I am not a swimmer. I can neither see him nor hear him but know he is there because his bike and his clothes are in their usual spot by the footpath.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Subterranean interrogation

    • Vin Maskell
    • 13 October 2010
    7 Comments

    'Excuse me,' the young man says. I meet his brown eyes. Pondering how many coins I have in my pocket I note his tidy hair, olive T-shirt, well-fitting jeans, coloured sneakers. Maybe he just wants to ask about the next train. He is perspiring a little. 'Can I talk to you?' he asks.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Scenes from a Chinese milk bar

    • Vin Maskell
    • 31 March 2010
    12 Comments

    The Chinese couple had kept the shop going for ten years at a time when milk bars have been disappearing off the map. In my two decades in this suburb about eight corner shops have closed. And in the past three years Peter's milk bar, like his wife, was just hanging on.

    READ MORE