Trespass (December)

October, a requiem at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Middle Park and in December a funeral at Ascot Vale Uniting Church, at both of which the modern language is given a rest when the congregation goes into Thomas Cranmer’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. The cricket nets at my primary school sided the street. ‘Trespassers Prosecuted’ read a sign clipped to the wire. Long forbidding words. Schoolchildren weren’t trespassers, though no one played there in holidays. How was a trespasser prosecuted? How did anyone know who was trespassing, and who not? Was it a sin? I thought like a child.