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  • Published 20211102
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-65-8
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

HERE’S A GOOD one, so don’t bother checking your gizmos for a better time-waste. And this story, well it’s as crazy as plainly true. I’d not believe it myself less it happened just as I’m about to say, to me no less, so quit your eye-roll and park that arse.

That’s right, it’s another one about Pidgin. Sit! Like I already told, he’s called Pidgin due to a love of the birds, and that he kinda looks like one, but there’s even more to it than that. For now, let’s just say he kept some birds on the roof, in the place that was his place. Lots of nights we’d be up with them if it was too hot to be doing much else but sit among dozy warblers in the half-dark, all preening away a hard day’s faffing, and me and Pidgin just watching the blinker of passing jets and wishing we had the money saved to get up and go. Or better yet, wondering loud where we’d wing it as birds, far enough from this dump, so far that even memory got no signal. Somewhere blue and clean and new. In truth that building-top was as high as we’d ever likely get, but it’s good to dream, far away from the grease trap we were working in at the time. And so we’d ramble. Pidgin the most and me just lovin to listen in the cool, and all the smells of the city sinking back down from another hot day gone.

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About the author

Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan is an awarding-winning writer, artist and filmmaker. His many books include The Red Tree, The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia. In...

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