Flamingos

Context by Tyler Keevil and Catrin Menai. Ellie grows up in a small town in Canada, on the edge of the Southern Alberta Badlands. The nearby prairie is her playground; in its bleak, beautiful expanses she discovers imaginary flamingos and a real fossilized dinosaur – a find exciting enough to prompt a visit from a high-powered academic. At such moments the remote community is briefly illuminated by a sense of significance, of possibility, but it soon relapses into its quiet ways. Ellie knows she will never be glamorous like her English friend Olivia, who has visited exotic places like Penzance and gets to go to the drive-in with Lance Hamilton, the school’ s handsome bad boy. But their world is too small for both girls; they leave for the big city, find love, lose it again and learn that disillusionment is a condition of life, not confined to any particular place. Years later Ellie, now living in Wales with her son, revisits her old home and makes a tentative peace with it.