Joint-winning entry in the ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association) flash fiction (200 words) competition to celebrate Valentines Day 2019…
A Lover of Alliteration
That never-ending book, There was Love to be Found in the Library, will hopefully find a place for the story of my friend Ally. She was a woman who always spoke with alliteration. When asked about the novel she was reading, for example, she described it as “a tepid and tedious tome that talks of tensions in today’s technological times”. I once heard someone say to her that her way of speaking was pompous. She replied, “what’s wrong, I wonder, with a widowed woman with a wonderful way with words?” Ally had embarked on this mode of speech in memory of her husband, Dudley Dirk den Delden, of Dutch descent. I was with her that day soon after he died when she found a book on alliteration in the basement of the library. “Ally”, I said, “you have found love in the library”. She corrected me, “I have located love, in the local library – lower level”. She reverted to her maiden name, Allwood. It was “a difficult decision that does not diminish my devotion to my dear departed Dudley”, but she wanted her great-grandchildren to be able to read aloud at her grave, “Ally Allwood, A Lover of Alliteration”.
Craig Pett 