AustLit

'As I climbed the station steps to the platform, automatically I looked at the girls coming down, wearing their straw boaters and swinging their bulky satchels on their shoulders; automatically – because the age differential was now somewhat important, in one’s home town, automatically because it was the conditioned reflex of ten years’ growing up looking at the same girls on the cycle ride into school. I’d been looking at them that morning as I cycled into the station and when I became aware of it, I was surprised at my unconscious reaction. I hadn’t cycled down at that particular and reflex-promoting time for quite a while. It was a forgotten routine, and to be reminded of it in some way made up for cycling in the suit I’d pressed the night before.' (Introduction)