AustLit

'A woman is telling me shes basically my grandmother. She tells me this while we sit opposite each other in her backyard, over the scraps of an almost-finished Christmas lunch. Although it's not Christmas; it's Boxing Day. From her pocket she removes a fifty-pack of Peter Jacksons, and taps the bottom of the box so a single cigarette slides out. In the box I can see one cigarette turned upward, a bloom of tobacco in a sea of butts. A lucky cigarette, a friend told me once, although that friend has long-since moved onto the more economically viable pouch. The woman - Finnie is her name, I have no idea what it's short for - lights her cigarette, picks at the carcass of a Coles rotisserie chicken. I think about how much more depressed I am since I got Netflix. She tells me she feels as if she is my grandmother; I can call her anytime, with any problem.'  (Publication abstract)