The Colsons

 I am writing a set of stories for NaNoWriMo. They are about a semi-fictional family. Here's where I got my inspiration and the intro of the story...

Back in the day when Les and I would go to his childhood home for a visit his Mum would regale him with stories (read gossip) of the local townsfolk. Inevitably the conversation would go like this:

 

Les: Mum I don't know who you're talking about.

Mum: Of course you do.

Les: No I haven't lived here for eight years now I don't know these people.

Mum: But you know the Colsons, everyone knows the Colsons.

 

After that whenever we returned home she would do her thing and the conversation would go like this...

 

Mum: And the boy Scott is engaged to the girl from the bank.

Les: Oh, isn't she related to the Colsons?

Mum: (thinking hard) Um... ah... No, I don't think so.

 

I have spread the story of the Colsons to these foreign shores and you would not believe how many Western Australians know the Colsons! Not that many actually but way more now that they know me.

Here's the introduction..

 

The Colsons

 

You know the Colsons, everyone knows the Colsons. Big family in a small town. Not a particular town just any small town. They are everywhere. Lots of cousins, aunts, uncles and so forth. It’s a bit of a mystery as to how they all link up, but they do.

 

It’s almost a Kevin Bacon situation, but more like only one or two degrees of separation. As in someone you know is, or was, married to a Colson, friends with a Colson, or in the same sports team as a Colson. Your best mate’s mum lives two doors down from a Colson. Your first girlfriend in uni, your ‘one that got away’, she’s a Colson now. Married Doreen’s boy from over the other side of the river in the Cockerton’s old place. Good on him, eh?

 

The hairdresser’s new apprentice, the sales guy at the dairy factory, the town counsellor who always has sausage roll pastry and greasy marks on his shirt, and that hot girl that runs past your place every day in the very short shorts, all Colsons. 

 

So yeah, you know the Colsons, everyone knows the Colsons. Or do they?