Sky High by Hannah Roberts

This short story is a reflective piece as the narrator remembers her childhood experiences, using the symbol of the “washing line” to remind the reader about the
changes in one’s life and the strength of memories.
The first person narrator remembers the washing line “first”, with its “silver skeletal
arms”. This image is the central image of her reminiscence. She describes the garden
surrounding it and the “best climbing tree”, which was “festooned with socks and
knickers and shirts”. The nostalgic tone is established as we are caught up in her
world of colour and nature as she notes the “almond tree”, the nectarine tree’s “hard,
bird-bitten fruit” and other flora.
Yet the reader is abruptly moved on in time in with the ambiguous line, “Today,
however, it is bare”. At first it seems we have returned to the present but we soon
realise that her thoughts have wandered to another day in her childhood, when she
climbed the washing line and sat ...