Susan Gourley - Where are my slippers?

Rubber Gumboots, Handkerchief, Discharged shotgun cartridge, Glass and Perspex

My grandfather (lovingly referred to as ‘poppy’) was once given a rabbit to prepare a meal with. He enjoyed it so much that he ventured out one afternoon to catch another. Unable to find the slippers that he wore religiously regardless of where he was going, he instead put on his big black gumboots. With shotgun in hand, it appears that he tripped and fell as he tried to manoeuvre through an old fence. We don’t know why the safety catch was off, but he never came home. The local newspaper heading was ‘Elderly man dies from shotgun blast to the head’. My mother subsequently inherited poppy’s car and some months later as she was cleaning it, she discovered a pair of slippers tucked neatly in a far corner of the boot. To this very day, some twenty five years later, my mother still has those same pair of slippers in the boot of her car...