Game Day on Oblomov Street

Olga Svoboda, aged eighty-one, two years a widow, and her son Tilas, aged fifty-nine (divorced thirty years ago) lived together on Oblomov Street in Sydney’s west. Oblomov Street ran from a railway station to a stadium that, since its refurbishment ten years ago, had been the home ground of a popular Sydney soccer team.

On game days, late in the afternoon when the first supporters walked past their house towards the stadium, Tilas, watching for them from his recliner in the lounge-room, would announce to his mother, “The entertainment’s started!” Olga would get the coffee percolating while Tilas fetched two folding chairs and a small table from the garage, setting them up on the front lawn.

Happy, excited supporters thronged past Tilas and Olga towards the stadium. As dusk fell, residents in the street turned on fairy lights threaded along their front fences. Some houses had sophisticated laser light displays sending bright colourful beams into the enveloping canopy of…