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The Floor (extract)
Haworth Hodgkinson
First of all there had just been a stone floor. Uneven slabs of dressed granite.
The singers loved it. Every morning they bounced their antiphons around the hall
and into the vaulted roofspace. In the evening the dancers twisted their ankles
and fell among discarded food fragments. At night the cleaners swilled it down with
gothic bleach and renaissance disinfectant.
At some stage it was decided to install wooden floorboards. Planks were laid between
pedestals and hammered into place. This new found evenness was great for the dancers'
ankles, but some found the protruding nails a problem for their feet. A murmur amongst
the choristers bemoaned the lost echo and the cleaners swapped their buckets for
brooms to sweep the dust into the cracks between the boards.
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Read the rest of this story in Point of Balance.
Written 2006
Edited 2008/2013
Published in
Point of Balance, 2013
(Lemon Tree Writers)
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