John Pospisil

Late one night about four years ago, while searching online for information about the old White Bay Power Station at Balmain, I chanced across a piece of creative writing by a man in his early 30s. It described how he and a girlfriend broke into the abandoned power station, explored its bowels, and were almost caught by security guards.

Here’s a very short story I wrote recently, after not having done very much creative writing for some time.

I visit Isaac every year on his birthday.

I bring him a gift and tell him how much I miss him, and how much I hope that he will get better soon so that he can come and live with me in the outside world.

Every would-be fiction writer dreams of winning the Vogel prize (an Australian literary prize for young unpublished writers). I’m no exception, though of course, now that I’m 35, I’m too old to enter, and I have to cross that particular fantasy off my list.

This is a very short story I wrote in 2003 somewhere on a train in Europe. It takes place in a European capital some time in the future.

Vaclav had been in hospital for the  three weeks. His doctor assured him he didn’t have long to live, and that everything would soon be fine.

I wrote this short piece in 2002. I thought of it recently, and found it on the backup of the computer I had at the time.

No one told me Paul Lyneham died. I only found out after his widow wrote a book about her life with him - about two years after his death. I heard her interviewed on the radio.

I asked my work colleagues whether they had heard that Paul Lyneham died.