THERE always had been a discreet flow of gossip coursing through the lanes and alleyways around winding Monmouth Street.

The near accident, when Ms Buttle, while riding her mauve coloured bike with the wicker basket, almost crashed into her husband riding peloton style in front, when he stopped to let Ms Chrushin‘s yellow spotted tomcat cross the road.

And, not to forget, `Eyes-On-The -Street Ms Colibee´, who had this insane crush on posties, and just couldn‘t help herself being out, at just the exact moment, when the yellow vested rider of, not a white horse, but one of those humming, buzzing little scooters came riding into her little slice of the street.

But – and this is a big ‘but’, one of those ‘buts’ that are earth shaking (at least where the earth around Monmouth Street is concerned) rumours reached a new and never before seen high, when the blob moved in.

The blob moved into the apartment on the second floor of a nondescript apartment building, an eyesore anyway, if you asked just about anybody, but considered in our current edgy world not too bad in terms of architectural provenance, if only the paint wouldn‘t have been this bleached kind of ochre, which resembled our dried out outback minus kangaroos and gum trees, of course.

He moved in on a Sunday, at around 7 pm, with darkness approaching, the street lights flickering, before the starter finally caught and illuminated the blob, huffing and puffing, while heaving his stuff up the outside stairs of the building, things that he had brought, among all cars in a Holden Kingswood, which had more rust than paint left on its body.

Which couldn‘t be said of the blob, who was extremely colourful, actually quite nice to look at, said Ms Colibee, who lived just across and two to the side from the blob now.

And there was speculation in abundance, why the blob had picked just this neighbourhood to move into.

Was it the fragrant smell of the jacaranda tree out the front lawn of the building, which had been badly pruned a few years back, but was now sprouting  blooms again, or was it the escape routes leading from that building, as Mr Kossawa, a retired detective with the WA police force confidently told nearly everyone for days?

Any criminal, he lectured, the first thing a criminal is looking at, when scouting out an opportunity for burglary, theft or murder, are escape routes, multiples of them.

And only then, after successfully determining his chances of escape, will said criminal strike, and strike he will, said Mr Kossawa. Strike he will.

But what really happened, after a while, the rumours subsided, the blob became a part of the neighbourhood and actually, and this is true, apologised, after accidentally bumping into Mr Kalamides on the sidewalk, in quite a friendly way and invited him for tea to make up for the smashed eggs and the squashed tomatoes.

by URSULA KLEINHENZ