Portraits and Cameos , livre ebook

Portraits and Cameos
Stephen J. Stoneham
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-02-28
Portraits and Cameos About the Author Dedication Copyright Information Acknowledgements Part I: The Little Teaching Stories Introduction Coffee Break Point Café Australia: A Roxford Story Discovery at Rocco’s Café New Teacher’s Diary Monday, 15 June 2009 Tuesday, 16 June 2009 Wednesday, 17 June 2009 Facing Me Toothless I Like to Watch Ignorance Is Bliss, Please Doctor! The Spider and the Moth The Smashed Mirror The Human Pyramid Chatswood Love Hurts Daylight Saving The Royal Australian Wombat Squad Wombat Technology and the Christmas Pig By Way of Introducing the Stories The Royal Australian Wombat Squad 1968–1971 Wombat Technology The Christmas Pig On Violence I. Fathers and Sons II. The School Captain III. The PE Change Room Part II: The Little Flirting Stories The Woman in the Museum An Inkling A False Start Talking and Speaking Mothers and Daughters Circus Gunrunning and Girlfriends Unorthodox Liaison The Key The Little Things in Ending The 1959 Morris Major My Father 31.10.07 Just Another Patient How I Came to Marry How I Came to Marry
About the Author

The author
Mr Stoneham started his teaching career as a tutor in the University of Sydney’s English department. He has taught English at many schools including Sydney Grammar in Australia, Milton Academy in Boston and Marlborough College in the UK. He gained his first Head of English position in 1986 at the Emanuel School in Sydney and became its first Deputy Headmaster. He has held many executive positions in leading schools and universities and has been a principal of a university college for overseas students.
He has a Bachelor’s (Honours) degree and a Master’s (Honours) degree from Sydney University. He has a certificate in Gifted Education from the University of NSW, having gained a ‘High Distinction’ in a course he initially regarded as bunkum and yet became unexpectedly interested enough to register to study for a PhD in that field.
He works with schools, universities and tuition colleges in Sydney through Stoneham Education Consulting. His most recent projects involve helping talented Year 12 students to improve their essay writing and helping university students with their academic writing. He runs small groups for gifted students from Sydney’s finest selective schools’ Years 3 – 12 and does some editing/writing of school policies, publications and reports. He writes essays on pop culture and business, and has written reams on literature for teaching purposes. He has written an English textbook, a novel, his favourite satirical book based on an imaginary character called The Poire (complete with illustrations by his talented sister and music notation from his talented jazz saxophonist son) and now this collection of short stories and vignettes. He says he plans to give up writing, having said all he wanted to say.
He still plays guitar with bands, strives to improve his jazz improvisation, when his back is not sore takes his carbon fibre surf ski out on Sydney Harbour, loves his dog, Scout, to a point beyond infinity and loves his wife and family almost as much.
Dedication
For my family
Copyright Information
Copyright © Stephen J. Stoneham (2019)
The right of Stephen J. Stoneham to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528911535 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528911542 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528948098 (E-Book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
This book originated from a suggestion made by my beautiful friend Emma Clifford. She suggested that I write a story for her and gave me the initial concept. The book would never have been written without this prompt from her. Later, my sister, Victoria Dore, read some of the stories and said they were good and needed to be published. She is a voracious reader and I was flattered and encouraged. Her encouragement led me to write more stories. All through the writing process, my beautiful Australian friend Jane Kinkade read each story and advised. I came to rely on her judgment. Jane also introduced me to Krissi Grant through Facebook. Krissi was living in London and travelling extensively. One photograph Krissi posted was the inspiration for a story and another the choice for the book’s cover.
The illustrations for the Poire stories are by Victoria Dore – not only my sister, but a talented painter. She illustrated my larger adult/kids satirical book from which these stories came – The Poire: ses Mots et ses Actes.
As indicated above, the cover graphic is from a photograph supplied by Krissi Maree Grant.
Part I: The Little Teaching Stories

Introduction
These short stories have been written to help the students I have taught with examples of what can be done in a short space. I have often written them directly onto the computer, while the students watched and then edited these initial drafts later. Sometimes the skeleton of the story has come from the students, who usually began by telling me that they did not have anything to write about. I would quiz them and rapidly write down bits of their phrasing. Usually a concept would emerge from a detail.
I only have two maxims when it comes to writing: write about what you know and create a complex character.

Coffee Break Point
Walking up the main street was just one of many reminders each day that Max had a shit job. The street was as shit as his job – tar abutted onto roughly painted masonry where two-dollar shops peddled their wares and Sexy Nails shops summoned Asian girls to a life bent over the feet of plump women, whose painted extremities were the prettiest they were ever going to be.
But there was this one café, Rocco’s, that was his salvation; his lighthouse out at nauseous sea. He was a regular, often visiting twice a day, before and after work.
As he slid into his familiar seat, the almost rehearsed dialogue began:
“Ah, Max. Good afternoon!”
“Afternoon!”
“So how was work today?”
“Same old stuff. What about you?”
“What can I say? I can’t complain,” said Rocco with raised shoulders and showing the palms of his hands like some caricature of Shakespeare’s Shylock.
“Will I get you your usual?”
“Yes, please.”
One of the reasons Max liked coming here was because of the owner, Roccero. He was always jovial. He had this way of making everyone smile. Even though Max said the same thing to him every day, he was always enthusiastic and genuinely happy when they met. Max thought it must have been part of his Spanish-but-pretending-to-be-Italian personality – he was Spanish, but had named the café with an Italian variation of his name, in an attempt to fit in with the distinctive Italian neighbourhood. Rocco was really Roccero.
Max’s usual seat at his usual table on the pavement always felt like a gateway to the rest of the world. The table wobbled about as one of the waiters placed down his coffee, and he felt goose bumps forming as he touched the metal armrests. In an instant, his senses had become overloaded. He breathed in the details around him.
Max was a video camera at this table at this café. He captured the colour and the noise, but also the smell in the Roxford world around him. Today Roccero was playing some Michael Jackson song that was intermittently disrupted by the roar of the traffic on the main road outside. Coffee aroma wafted through the café and out to the street, sometimes perfumed by the stink of diesel fumes from trucks. There was also a slight tang of urine from the alley in between the café and the barber shop next door – a graffiti-ed indent that the homeless frequented when the street and the café closed down in the dead of night.
A roadworks sign squatted on the road, despite the distinct lack of workers. On the footpath, an aluminium dog bowl was filled with water – but there was no dog. Unartistic clumsy spray paint lunges covered the brick walls and some of the older shop signs. Across the road, Max could spy into the windows above shops that opened onto wretched lives – rented lives – the flotsam and jetsam of restless urban desert.
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
With an aggressive squeal of brakes, Max was flung out of his reverie. A car horn honked insistently and demanded attention. The café darkened as a scud of clouds crossed the sun. The car looked like one of those American muscle cars – big and brash – and the driver looked straight past him, staring daggers at something in the café.
Turning inside out, Max put himself in the driver’s eyes and saw Roccero hugging a crying woman, whose flesh bulged over the top of her ill-fitting jeans. Roccero was one of those men who invaded your space. He often hugged his customers; and, in this case, he was caught hugging this weathered and peroxided brittle blonde. Another domestic tragedy was playing itself out on the small stage of inner city life. A melodrama really.
A tyre squeal followed as the driver turned into the nearest street, and moments later charged angrily into the café. There was a string of profanities aimed at the alarmed café owner as the irate driver readied to punch Rocco. The waiters tried desperately to calm the situation but they seemed only to fan the flames.
Watching the unfolding chaos, Max felt the full