The balconies of Bonhaven

Bonhaven was a patchwork of narrow streets, with houses adorned by ornate, overhanging balconies, allowing families to soak up a little sun on wintry mornings, or enjoy a cool drink in the summer evening breeze.

Neighbourhood competitions developed – loveliest balcony garden, best Christmas display. The neighbours of Bonhaven chatted, balcony to balcony, so close were the houses. Their balconies connected them.

But there came a time when along the balconies spread murmurs of discontent, then rumours of government corruption and the first sparks of protest and rebellion.

That was when they announced the crippling balcony tax, and the Bonhaven revolution was extinguished.

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This story is for Friday Fictioneers, a weekly flash fiction challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The picture prompt made me think of houses  with bricked-up windows – a response to the window taxation which existed in Britain and France from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries – longer in France. Click on the picture below to read more.

The wall between us.

Three generations of O’Donnells and Hennesseys have farmed here; neighbours and friends in years of bounty and of drought. This place here is our summer picnic spot, built from stones cleared from both properties. There’s no dividing wall.

Copyright – Rachel Bjerke

It’s ten years now since Grace and I decided to go organic. They laughed – called us dreamers; but we worked hard and won certification. We believed in this.

It only took one bad storm to lose it all – one foul wind that blew Hennessey’s damned GM seeds into my crop.

I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, just to burn his poisonous acres to ashes, to teach him.

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This story is for Friday Fictioneers, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ weekly flash fiction challenge. This week’s picture prompt made me think of stone walls, and Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”.

Frost’s farming neighbours might have had their differences, but it’s certain that their pine trees and apple orchards could co-exist perfectly well without the need for a wall between them. In today’s world of genetically modified crops, what wall can protect the paddocks of those who wish to farm using more natural methods? “Good fences make good neighbours”, claims one old farmer, while his neighbour laughs at his out-of-date ideas. I wonder what they’d make of today’s dilemma.

My story is fiction, of course, but here’s an article about a recent dispute between neighbouring farmers in Western Australia, screened on ABC television.