Cirrus@Austlit

'The advertisement is brief, almost cryptic: ‘Ron’s Cleaning. SAPOL registered. Fully equipped. Reasonable rates, twenty years’ experience.’ It sits alongside three other more flourishing, colourful and elaborately designed offers awaiting a click of the mouse to reveal their wonders. A quick random choice from these three reveals a well-known, thoroughly commercial outfit. I decide — for no reason that I could clearly detail — to ring Ron.' (Introduction)

'When I was a teenager, something glitched in my brain and central nervous system and my hand stopped working. Over the course of a year, I went from playing in orchestras to being unable to hold a pencil; from being in the top team of every sport I played to being unable to throw a ball. I’d baffled the world’s top neurologists and exhausted every avenue of medical testing. Contrary to all the advice I’d absorbed to that point, the harder I tried, the worse things got. The right side of my body simply did and does not cooperate with my mind’s instructions. My involuntary muscle seizures worsened and became a constant part of my life. They are to this day.' (Introduction)

'It’s been a year of dogs. Tilly and Chilli and Louis and George and Lulu and Chip. The handsome Groodles — one a forest of golden curls, the other a tumble of butterscotch tresses — jogging with their athletic owners; they sprint across the road at precisely the same time each day, pausing just long enough to sniff cursorily in our direction (is that a gesture of friendly acknowledgement or chilly superiority?) before disappearing up the road.' (Introduction)