Under the umbrellas of Lygon Street

doing our Renoir ‘Boating Party’ scene

a voice (mine) is saying –
Once in Suva a lovely Fiji girl wrote a message

on the flyleaf of my Lonely Planet guide

to her grandfather, a village chief in Ovalau

that ancient island and in due course I walked

down a track under the volcano cone into

a green clearing, was led to meet Joeli,

sat to a meal with the elders in a long hut

and was asked to bowl the first ball

in the Sunday kirikit match.Which I did.

Then lay drowsing in the palm-fingered shade.
This tale curdles among the coffee cups.

“You made that up.” Indeed I did.

The iron laws of narrative make fictions of us all.