The Goose

I went to Mitcham Grammar in the fifties, turning left out of the school gates you could walk up to a small parade of shops.
There was a small grocery shop on the corner owned by a rather corpulent elderly man. He had a huge white goose (well it looked huge to us!) which always stood outside the shop and would go for us boys if we got anywhere near it. It usually looked a bit scruffy with a "fringe" rather dirty feathers around the bottom of its body.

It always amused me that when the owner in his rather dirty white coat stood outside the shop with his hands behind his back with the goose standing next to him, both gazing across the road to the common, how alike they looked.