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I really like this. Are you introducing new words beyond 50? Maybe it just feels like that. I don't care really - I love the progression of the new couple joining the old residents when a new new couple come in - like laying down strata. and it has that stripped down feeling that makes the progression - escalation - feel even more - geological.

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Thanks Jackie! I was too lazy to count unique words myself, but the online-unique-word-checker said 50 :-).

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I agree with the sense of strata continuing to be laid in Oak Street. Another palimpsest is being laid on Oak Street . . . maybe Tim will tell us where and when the Oak Street of his imagination is located . . . revelations which could be escalators of the story to be continued?

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I wrote the first part in the train, looking out on a street in an industrial part of where I live. Gentrification is a thing around here. So quite literal inspiration and only a small amount of imagination.

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But what imaginative vistas your 200/50 open up to you and your readers Tim, suggesting that there may be more than a grain of truth in the adage 'less is more' or in this case 'much more literal inspiration' and 'much less imagination'?

Was it an American scene seen from your train window that literally inspired you?

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Thanks Rob. It was Utrecht, in The Netherlands.

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Ah Utrecht! You know Tim of тАШAll the places in all the world . . .тАЩ I would never have placed Oak Street in Utrecht . . . But now that you have, kindly, shared itтАЩs location it both constrains the story taking shape and widens the horizons of it potentiality.

That тАШnew coupleтАЩ moved into Oak Street from . . . Where? And then, following them into Oak Street, where did the тАШnew new coupleтАЩ arrive from?

And whatтАЩs with the predilection of both fresh generation incomes couples for opening cocktail bars?

Care to continue your tell Tim?

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