Do shirts grow on trees? Not often but sometimes. Let me explain.
On our quiet residential cul de sac stands a sapling and one morning when out with the dog, we noticed it had a shirt dropped over a lower branch. Hmm. It’s Newtown and we are inured to weird sights. We ignored it for a day, and then I stopped to take it off – thinking, though the thought was not fully formed, to put in the bin for tomorrow’s trash collection, removing another eye sore from the street.
Other eye sores have included mattresses dumped at the end of the street. No doubt some green voter thinks the mattress fairies will look after it. Detritus from home renovations. Nails which have given us more than one flat tire. As I said: Newtown, where a little bit of the wild West remains.
As I touched the shirt I realised it was not, as I had unconsciously supposed, a filthy rag but rather a clean, ironed, King Gee workshirt, and that it was heavy, heavy because there were keys in the top buttoned pocket.
Turning the shirt around to get at the pocket I also found a University of Sydney crest on it. Huh!?
In sum, there was a clean, near new, University of Sydney building and grounds workshirt with a ring of half a dozen keys on it. Wait! There is more.
The keys were security keys, those double channel that used to cost of a hundred dollars a piece to replace when I was head of department. I know this because Dr. Twit, a loser in every other respect, lost a key regularly. That was five years ago so now probably $200.
We pondered how anyone could lose the shirt off the back. We wondered why the shirt was so neat. Why it was dropped over the tree branch. Most of all, we wondered why it was so far from the University. We speculated how it might have happened but none of our ideas made much sense. (No snide remarks please!)
Because she was going to meet an old comrade in books for lunch on campus, on the way the Child Bride took the shirt to the Campus Security Office. There she was told, as the keys and shirt, were gratefully received, that nothing had been reported missing – there is a standing order to report lost keys immediately. Dr Twit was good at that.
The return of the shirt was a quick transaction and no details were asked or given, so we shall never know the next act in this drama. Let the imagination begin!
We may also imagine who King Gee was, because the King Gee web site is mum on the subject.
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