Passing Time

Passing Time
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 21, 2015

I arrived at the bus stop, breathless, having jogged across the park and up the grassy embankment to the highway. An elderly gent on the bench seat acknowledged me with a nod. His Labrador, sprawled at his feet, raised one eyebrow in greeting and thumped its tail lazily on the concrete.

“Excuse me,” I asked the owner. “Have I missed the 99?”

“Nothing green’s gone past since we’ve been here.”

Relieved, I sat down and remarked on his dog: “How old is he?”

“Bess? She’s nine.” He reached down to stroke a floppy ear. My bus-stop companion bore a remarkable likeness to Ernest Hemingway: a still handsome face framed by an impressive white beard, trimmed to follow a strong jawline. A navy fisherman’s cap, complete with rope braid, angled across his brow. I noticed the sharp crease in his cotton trousers and his polished brown lace-ups, one of which was wedged under Bess’ barrel chest. Only his walking stick hinted at infirmity. It was topped with a brass duck’s head, the bill worn smooth from constant handling. As we waited, he absentmindedly tapped the footpath with his stick.

“Where’re you off to then?” he said, suddenly. I wondered if he was hungry for conversation.

“I have a dentist’s check-up,” grimacing for his benefit. “Hope it’s a quick one.”

“I’ve given up on teeth,” he said with a chuckle, which turned into a wheeze, exploding into a coughing fit.

When he’d composed himself, I pointed to the duck’s head. “I’m quite taken with your walking stick. I’m supposed to convince my mum to use one – she’s getting a bit unsteady – but she won’t budge. Although I haven’t seen a fancy one like yours.”

“Bought it in London,” he said, giving the handle a twirl. “Been a beauty. Only problem is, the ferrule wears out every six months.”

“The what?”

“The rubber cap bunged on the end here. See?” He raised his stick. “Ferrule. There’s all kinds, but I like this one with the raised bumps underneath. When you’re resting your whole weight on it, it’s the difference between standing up and falling on your face!”

“Who knew walking sticks could be so technical!” I said. He chuckled again, no wheeze this time.

“Do you live near here?” I said, happy to make small talk now it was obvious we’d both missed the bus.

He pointed his stick over his shoulder. “I live three streets that way. Same house for 42 years. My wife died six months ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said quickly, surprised he was sharing such intimacies with a stranger. “It was a long illness,” he continued matter-of-factly. “I was relieved for her at first – she was 81 – but as the months go by, I’m realizing she was the last person I could talk to about the past. My friends are too busy with their own troubles.”

“Do you have family here?”

“One son in Sydney. The other in Albany. They’re good to me, but they got their own families. And I’m getting on for 83. Some days, I can’t imagine getting to 85, but then again, when I was 75 and first diagnosed with cancer, 80 seemed unlikely too.”

“My mum’s turning 80 next year,” I said. “She reckons she’s reached the age of invisibility.”

“Hmmf.” A thoughtful silence stretched between us. “This is the problem for old people,” he said finally. “We’re no longer involved in the main business of life: production and reproduction. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to make ourselves relevant again. But at least we can give you young ones the encouragement to keep at it.”

“Quite frankly, I worry more about losing my marbles,” I said, voicing a private fear. “Dementia runs in the family and I’m terrified it’s sneaking up on me.”

“Luck of the draw, ain’t it,” he replied. “I have problems with my lungs and a weak heart. I’m more deaf than not, but I can hear what I need to with this little gadget in my ear. I can’t see properly and my hip gives me hell, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned – it’s that you’ve gotta keep going. Nothing else for it.”

I heard the crescendo of an approaching diesel. I swivelled to see the 99 bearing down on us and leapt up to wave at the driver.

“C’mon old girl,” I said to Bess the Labrador, still flaccid on the footpath. Her owner, bracing on his stick, heaved himself up.

“She’s allowed on the bus, is she?” I asked, scrabbling for change in my pocket.

“Oh, I’m not waiting for the bus,” said my new acquaintance. “Bess and I just stopped here for a rest. We’ll head off home now. Nice talking.”

Talk Isn’t Cheap

Talk Isn’t Cheap
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 14, 2015

Small talk is the art of saying nothing in particular. This, in itself, constitutes a problem. Among strangers, I quail at converting my interior monologue to an exterior dialogue. What if my listener thinks I’m a braggart? Or a bore?

I have no issue with talking per se. I can efficiently convert my James Joyce-ian stream of consciousness to sound: words babble from my mouth with ease. I like to fill the gaps in conversations before they turn into unpleasant silences. I can talk incessantly by yoga-breathing through my nose.

But in social settings, the pressure to be entertaining makes me skittish. I fear my awkward thoughts will produce awkward conversation. (I like to save my eccentricities for my friends). One glass of champagne and I begin to prattle.

Last Wednesday at a festival launch, I found myself wedged against a retired but fashionable gentleman in a shirt printed all over with pineapples. I was trapped with him between a table of hors d’oeuvres and a staircase. He began pumping me for tips on how to attract an audience to his blog.

“My concern is how to make it authentic,” he said earnestly.

“Well, that’s not a problem,” I replied, warming to a favourite topic. “Just write about what you know. Don’t fake it. Readers can always tell when you’re making it up.”

“I write from the perspective of my cat,” he said.

Caught in the stare of his unblinking eyes, my smile died on my lips. The air between us turned crisp. I took a gulp of my champagne and tittered as we plunged into a conversational black hole. I contrived my escape by pretending to greet a familiar face amongst the sea of heads beyond him.

“Can you excuse me?” I said. “But I’d like to talk more about your cat later.”

And away I weaved from the feline impersonator to camouflage myself amid the humid crush at the bar.

Waiting for the barman’s attention, I cringed at my conversational misfire. I shouldn’t have been so strident. Would the poor blogger’s ego reinflate? I ordered a spritzer and kept my third eye roving on alert against an incoming pineapple shirt.

What constitutes good small talk? I have discovered that often, it involves complaining. We women, in particular, like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances. At a friend’s 50th just before Christmas, I tuned into the chatter of two women in our queue for the loo.

“Ugh! How hot was it today?” said one.

“And humid!” replied the other. (Mutual rolling of eyes).

“My hair turns to frizz in this weather!” said the first woman.

“I know. I know. Makes me pine for winter.”

Her friend lowered her voice: “Though I see Sharon’s enjoying the heat – does she have to come bra-less to everything?!”

I gawped to recognise Sharon as a former workmate as she bounced out of the stall.

As an over-confident 20-something, I was keen to show off my verbal thrust and parry. In my world of work, small talk was not just a rudimentary exchange or a comfort zone when drinking. It could open doors. Enhance reputations. Small talk had winners and losers.

But I found the competition exhausting. The extroverts were bent on outsmarting and outcharming each other. The introverts were ignored. The rest of us couldn’t get a word in. Sometimes at parties, I’d adjourn to a corner and study people’s faces as they interrupted each other. Their gaiety just looked forced.

There’s something civilised about allowing pauses in a conversation. We all want to plug a silence, but it’s remarkable how interesting other people become when they’re allowed time to collect their thoughts.

My husband does not require small talk to sustain his entertainment. In varying degrees, it bores him, drains him and irritates him. When I’m sharing scuttlebutt about Julie Bishop’s hair, I’ll see his eyes narrow and his forehead crease into a frown. He’s trying to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. He’s not being superior – he just doesn’t get it. To him, idle chatter is the noise we make on our way to meaningful conversations – like the pros and cons of floating the Swiss franc. He specialises in big-talk, a la Winston Churchill, but with hair.

So in this, the Year of the Goat, I have decided to perfect my small talk. I will charge into spontaneous conversations with strangers and shine. I will be ebullient and charming and my single entendres will double. I will deliver my repertoire of Rose Hancock anecdotes and expect my audience to clutch their stomachs and hoot. And when I find myself next to the bra-less Sharon at the checkout, I’ll be brave and say: “Thanks for pretending you didn’t see me in the Weetbix aisle, Shaz. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk either.”

Under the skin

Under the skin
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 8, 2014

We’ve become an unlikely pair of confidantes, the icecream shop lady and I. But regularity breeds familiarity. And small children are good conduits for conversations with strangers.

Her name is Paula. In a hot-pink polo shirt, she’s a splash of colour against the stainless steel coffee machine. Her ice-cream parlour is tucked into a Fremantle laneway. Opposite her shop, a terracotta Neptune mounted to a wall dribbles water from his lips into a tiered pond. My kids beg for coins to drop in the wishing well.

Paula is always chirpy and energetic. We swap stories as my two connoisseurs paw her glass cabinet, arguing the merits of Chocolate over Bubblegum. I tell Paula about my first job as an ice-cream scooper and how my arms would ache. She tells me about growing up in Mount Magnet in the 60s; how her dad became shift boss for the Hill 50 gold mine. How her ex-husband, father of their daughter, had been a proof-reader for The West Australian.

“Cup or cone, my darling?” Paula says to my son. She slyly glances at me over the counter. “Cup,” I mouth. She gives me a little nod – two mothers colluding against ice-cream drippage.

“Cone!” my boy protests, sensing defeat.

“But I can get more in a cup!” promises Paula, and she scoops a thick ribbon of chocolate ice-cream into a fat ball.

My 4-year-old hugs the counter and blurts: “Paula? What happened to your face?”

I cringe but Paula flashes me a wink and props her elbows on the counter. “Well,” she replies gently. “I got burnt when I was a little girl. See?” She turns her right cheek, stretching the patchwork of skin grafts that criss-cross her face and neck.

“When I was five, my dad was pouring petrol into his truck and a spark from the engine ignited the can. He flung the burning can over his shoulder just as I walked around the side of the truck. The petrol fire went all over me – burnt off my hair, melted my ear, went down my face, neck, shoulder, arm.”

She lifts a lock of her hair to reveal the stub of her right ear. My daughter, for once, is silent.

“Mum said she’d never seen Dad move so fast. He scooped me up and threw me in the water trough. I spent the next two years in the Mount Magnet hospital. Had free run of the place. Had breakfast every morning with the doctor and his wife. Mum and Dad came afternoons. But seeing my Dad gave me flashbacks. I’d start screaming and I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t let him anywhere near me. But every day after work, he’d sit outside my room. He’d sit there, on a chair in the corridor, for hours. And then he’d go home.”

My four-year-old has all the information she needs. She hands me her empty cup and darts off to join her brother, now splashing in the fountain.

Paula mops the counter: “From the age of seven until I was sixteen, every school holidays, Mum drove me to Perth for skin grafts. And every three months, I outgrew one of them. All the skin on my right arm, they grafted onto my left. The doctors took bits from all over me. But I such a scrawny kid, they ran out of skin.”

She strokes the luminously pale side of her neck: “They used a piece of my stomach lining to patch here.” She laughs at my shocked face, saying, “Mum always told me, ‘You’re no different to anyone else.’ I believed her. Hospital was an adventure. The pain never scared me.”

A dad with an excited toddler tugging at his arm, steps up to order a waffle.

“I stopped having grafts when I was 22,” Paula resumes quietly when they depart. “By then, I was a barmaid in Kambalda. And you know what? No-one gave me a hard time. But after that last lot of plastic surgery, when I needed six weeks off work, Mum thought I better talk to Centrelink. When I got to the front of the queue, this government fella says ‘Sorry. Wrong queue. The handicapped counter’s over there.’”

“I said, ‘How dare you! I’m not handicapped!’ I stormed out in tears. That was the only day anyone ever got to me.”

It’s time to head home. I collect damp socks and four wet shoes and we wave goodbye. But all week, Paula’s story crowds my thoughts.

‘The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.’

That quote by Hemingway suits her.

Old School Ties

Old School Ties
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 4, 2014

She weaved through the crowd towards me. I grinned and waved. I hadn’t seen her since I was 17 and now I was 46. Yet here we were at our thirty year high school reunion and she’d hardly changed. She looked softer than I remembered. Her hair was shorter. It suited her.

She squeezed in beside me at the bar. As I puckered up to greet her, I saw her eyes dart down to my name badge and back up to meet mine. In that instant, I realised she had no idea who I was.

My school-mate tried to recover her composure. “Ros!” she said brightly, but my ego had already collapsed. Our conversation lurched into a catalogue of our offspring and then we floundered. I made a lame excuse about needing the bathroom and fled.

The ladies’ loo is the only sanctuary at a school reunion. Re-applying my lipstick, I examined my reflection. Was it so surprising she hadn’t recognised me? I no longer had a centre part and camel-brown plaits. She and I were never close at school. We had no classes in common. To her, I was just another girl in the corridor in a broccoli-green blazer and drab pleated skirt.

And yet her memory lapse rattled me. Was I so forgettable? How could she have failed to notice my magnetic personality and sparkling wit? What was I like at high school? Twenty minutes into our reunion and my old insecurities, so long buried, swarmed to the surface.

I was the girl desperate to fit in but afraid of standing out. Always self-conscious. I remembered the hours spent preening, the bouts of self-loathing. “Better to be a late bloomer, I reckon,” said a friend’s dad. I still don’t know if he meant it as a compliment or a put-down.

Aged 15, I wanted a name like Jenny or Sally or Lizzy or Tracy because then I could reinvent myself as a Jen or a Sal, or Liz or Trace. I wanted a Reef Oil tan. I started drinking cola to look sophisticated. I blew a week’s waitressing money on a red string bikini like the one Elle McPherson wore in the TAB ads. (I mustered the courage to wear that bikini just the once – from my bedroom wardrobe to the bathroom mirror and smartly back again).

I feigned self-assuredness at school and wallowed in my inferiority complex at home. I was desperate to own a pair of white Starfire rollerskates because my friend Jane pirouetted effortlessly in hers. I wanted a boyfriend called Brent, or Shane, or Troy, preferably driving a V8 Falcon with a racing stripe down the side. I ended up with a boyfriend who drove a Ford Escort with a smashed tail-light. His name was Andy. Close enough, I decided.

I couldn’t bear to be parted from my posse of girlfriends. These were trusted friends who warned me that soaking my ponytail in lemon juice would make my hair go brassy, then brittle, then snap off. But they still went with me to the emergency hairdresser’s appointment afterwards. (Mum had already counselled me against do-it-yourself colorants. She disparaged hair dye the way she disparaged Gough Whitlam).

The door to the loos at the reunion hall banged open and in barrelled an old classmate. I snapped out of my teenaged angst as she shouted in mock anger: “I still don’t get why they made Jane the tennis captain! It should’ve been me! They made her bloody captain of everything!

I snorted.

“Trace,” I said, “does anyone, ever, get over high school!”

“Nup. Never.”

Back in the function room, the champagne was settling nerves and dissolving inhibitions. We shouted to make ourselves heard. I took a few moments to register some faces, but remarkably, our voices had stayed the same. One by one, we reconnected, exchanged life stories, surprised each other.

I recalled our previous reunion a decade ago. Then aged 36, I’d felt uncomfortable amid the jockeying that night. Who had their dream job? Who’d snaffled the perfect husband? Who looked good, better, different, old? Who was making a tit of themselves on the dance floor?

I’d arrived at my 30th reunion expecting more of the same. But actually, we’d finished gloating and posing. I admired the air traffic controller, the flamenco dancer, the opthalmologist, the mother of five. I heard about sick children. I swapped stories about ageing parents, friends who’d died. I listened to tales of crumbling marriages and cheating husbands. In middle age, most of us had shed our envy and were arriving at humility.

We all thought we’d grown out of our childish ways. Yet really, we’d just consolidated our personalities. The extroverts were still extroverts. The shy girls were still shy. And everyone said I was exactly the same. The same how? I don’t know what they meant. A giggly drunk? Hope not.

Along for the Ride

Along for the Ride
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 20, 2014

A green speck appeared on the crest of the hill. “Bus!” I shouted to the kids, Small daughter and her brother (plus 4-year-old Finlay on loan from up the road) hopped down from the park bench and teetered on the kerb, desperate to be first to recognise the bus numbers.

“That’ll be the 107,” said a spry fellow who was leaning against the bus-stop, dressed like a man who hasn’t cared about fashion since 1970. Beneath his herringbone flat-cap I noticed the bulbous nose of a man prone to thirstiness. His polyester Bermudas were as short as his socks were long. His cable-knit socks were folded just under his knees, insured against gravity by a pair of elastic garters. I could see the indent where his garters gripped the top of his calves. I hadn’t seen socks like that in years.

“We want the 99,” I said.

“That’s the express. You just missed it.” The kids groaned. He stepped forward to hail the 107. My bus-stop companion hitched up his shorts, inadvertently advertising the contours of his cobblers as he plumbed his pockets for change. He withdrew a handful of coins and the contents of his shorts sank back into obscurity.

He climbed aboard bus 107. In its wake, another green blur appeared up the hill. “Here comes the 99!” I shouted. The kids capered on the footpath as the driver swung the bus in, doors parting with a hiss. Leaping aboard, my charges tore up the aisle, scrambling onto the high bench seats up the back.

“Three under-seven’s and me to Freo please.”

“$2.90” said the driver, an arithmetical prodigy.

He gazed into his side mirror as I hurriedly counted out a palmful of 10 and 20-cent pieces, plonking them down in two small stacks. He raked the coins into his till and pulled out sharply into the heavy traffic leaving me to stumble up the aisle.

Propped against the rear window, we four had an elevated view of our fellow passengers. Half a dozen students, heads bowed over their smart phones, would not have noticed if a gorilla boarded. A white-haired woman in a blue sunhat was nursing a shopping cart on the seat next to her. In front of us, three biker-types with black straggly hair were squabbling about where to get off. “I tell you, jackass!” one remarked. “It’s only a five minute walk from Adelaide Street to the pub.”

My seven-year-old jumped to his feet. “You’re next!” he shouted at the bikers.

I grabbed him by the arm. “For goodness sake sit down! What are you doing?!”

He pointed at the biker sitting alone directly behind his two mates. The bloke was leaning forward, gripping the seat in front. I could vaguely see that his knuckles were inked with blue capitals.

“See Mum! That hand spells Y-O-U-R and that one says N-E-X-T!”

The guy with the scary knuckles swivelled to take us in, then held up both his hands. “Read that can ya mate?” he said to my boy, flashing the gaps in his teeth. “Done some good work, they ‘ave,” and he balled his fingers into fists and mimed a couple of uppercuts.

My son turned to me with eyes like saucers. I patted his thigh: “Not so loud, hey?” Suddenly, the driver jumped on the brakes and my neighbour’s 4-year-old shot off the back seat, landing clumsily in the aisle. l scrambled down just as a technicoloured arm scooped him up and set him back on his feet. “There you go little fella,” said tattoo-man (who’d clearly blown a few pay cheques on his body art). “Evil Knievel’s driving the bus today.”

“Are you okay, Finny?” I said, lifting small boy onto my lap and wrapping my arms around him. The bus surged forward.

Our bus cruised along the highway, the late sun hanging low over Leighton beach. I looked around for a window latch to let in some fresh air but the glass was slick. When did they take the latches off bus windows, I wondered. Over the old rail bridge we went, depositing the old woman and her shopping cart on the other side.

Up the back, pitching and swaying across the traffic lanes was making me queasy but the kids were squealing their appreciation. Up ahead, I saw the Queen Street roundabout. “Almost there, Finny” I said, wedging my knee against the seat in front as we swung clockwise. The kids slid sideways, banging shoulders and giggling. The bus pulled into the bay and the doors sprang open. I gathered up our belongings and ushered three small bodies towards the exit.

“I got kids too, said Mr Knuckles. “At least, I use-ter.”

“Well, you can’t have mine,” I said, friendly-fashion.

Not Yet Booked Out

Not Yet Booked Out
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 13, 2014

The sight of so many books made my heart skip. Thousands of them sat pressed together on tables, a sea of spines, filling the University of WA’s Winthrop Hall. A smiling fellow with a silvery moustache stood by the door in a black apron. “Half price today,” he said. “We’re open ‘til 9.30 tonight.”

A hushed crowd inched along the tables, heads bowed over the vast array of titles. I could hear the gentle fluttering of pages, the murmurs of quiet conversations, an occasional soft thud as a heavy book was shut. The ceiling fans circled lazily.

I wandered over to a table piled with old tomes. I prised free a mottled-green volume. It was a book of Robert Browning’s poetry, printed in 1908. I ran a finger over the embossed gold lettering and opened the cover, inhaling the musty sweetness of its ageing paper. The flyleaf was inscribed with a beautiful handwritten cursive, all graceful loops and flourishes: ‘Mary – Ad finem fidelis – George’

The kindly doorman in the black apron happened to be standing behind me and craned over my shoulder. ‘Faithful to the end’, he said quietly. I smiled my ignorant thanks and admired George’s penmanship anew.

The pages of Robert Browning’s verse felt thick and coarse. They were handcut, some snipped a centimetre shorter than their neighbours. As I fanned through them, a rose petal slipped from between two pages and fluttered to the floor. Featherlight in my palm, the petal had once been crimson, but was now yellowed with age and puckered from the weight of a hundred pages. It had been pressed against a poem on page 138, ‘The Last Ride Together.’ I was intrigued.

…What if we still ride on, we two

With life for ever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,

The instant made eternity, — ”

Had the petal been pressed by George or by Mary? Or by some later owner? Did this gift mark the beginning of a love story or a reconciliation? I decided good books don’t give up all their secrets at once, and tucked Browning under my arm to ward off other browsers.

Standing to my left was a matron who’d picked up a scuffed leather-bound book with loose joints and torn hinges. She was elbowing her husband and tittering. Her husband was feigning interest but he himself was absorbed in a book about submarines (fancifully titled Up Periscope).

Tired of trying to hold his attention, she caught mine instead and proffered the ragged book. “Have a look at this!” she said. “It’s priceless!” I read the cover: The Witches Broomstick Manual. On the frontispiece, the illustrator had attempted a flattering portrait of a hag astride her broomstick, silhouetted against a full moon. The subtitle read: The Construction, Care and Use of the Witches’ Broom; Complete with a Course of Flight Instruction.

“Just what I need!” I replied. “The broom I’ve got at home is useless!”

I flicked through the soiled and spotted pages, stopping at a chapter on “Air Safety.” I read aloud to her: “Only fly at night. Avoid areas of military or political sensitivity. Study the stars and learn to guide by them. A small flashlight will be of immense value aloft. Your speed and height are limited only by atmospheric pressure and the prevailing weather. Be warned: daytime flying will cause trouble.”

“No kidding,” she said and we both giggled. The next paragraph concerned seatbelts: “A strong belt or rope tied around your waist should be fastened to the Besom (broom), so that you may be rescued after a possible separation. It may seem undignified to come in for a landing dangling at the end of a rope, but pride is no substitute for safety.”

“Marvellous!” she said. Her husband turned to me and sighed: “Please don’t let that book come home with us!”

I wedged it carefully back into the pile and the couple drifted to another table. All around the hall, people were moving in slow rotations, engrossed in the quiet pleasure of book inspections. Most had a selection concertinaed along one arm. Those with too many to carry were offloading books into boxes, stacked in clumsy pagodas against the wall.

Perhaps, despite our gadgetry, we will always turn to books for comfort? For consolation, or stimulation or escape. Maybe books are the only true magic? I headed for the exit and handed over the book of poetry wedged in my armpit.

“Aah Robert Browning!” said the woman at the counter. She admired the cover, then gently opened it to find the price. The book fell open at George’s Latin inscription to Mary and she looked at me quizzically. “Faithful to the end,” I said. “How lovely,” she said. “That’ll be $6 please.”

Enough about me

Enough about me
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday May 11, 2013

A conversation is not just a rudimentary exchange of information or a conduit for drinking with friends. It has winners and losers. It can be life changing. I know this because a conversation in a pub landed me my husband.

Back then, I didn’t know fate had arranged for me to be leaning against the back bar of the Subi hotel with a man wearing Ronnie Barker glasses. He was comfortably stout, like a prized footballer gone to pot, and I noticed his manly hands (I have a thing about extremities). He was charming, disarming and attentive but it was the way he spoke to me that made me skittish, like Bambi. Here was a man who was warming up for a conversational joust. I set out to beguile him with my verbal prowess.

I failed to allow for the first glass of champagne on my empty stomach. It sent my mouth galloping ahead of my brain. Halfway through the second glass, I was babbling and gushing. Sentences I should have filtered for tedium and stupidity dropped straight onto my tongue and became clumsy word spillage. I was all single-entendre, my brilliant wit sabotaged by a bad case of love jitters.

On this night, I thought it best to attempt being a coquette, rather than try to outfox this razor-sharp raconteur when I’d gone all goosy. And anyway, he was asking too many Mensa questions: “So, being an only child, what have you learnt about other people?”

How to respond? I squirmed. He leaned back and propped his elbows on the bar while a lively silence throbbed between us. My brain darted about in search of a penetrating reply but all I could come up with was: “the big question for me is why none of my yoga pants have ever been to yoga?”

He grinned – I took it as a compliment. And then he leaned in close, brushed an eye-lash off my cheek and whispered “Make a wish.” I giggled in falsetto.

I secretly asked the champagne fairy for three wishes – I wished this man would take me home and hang his bad tie in my closet, I wished to grow old and grey with him and I wished for thinner arms. The good fairy granted two wishes, and I’m resigned to wearing sleeves.

That is the G-rated version of the night I met my man on a late summer’s night. Our eighth anniversary has just passed (un-remarked), but he remains a challenging conversationalist.

Conversation is an art form. We all admire those who have mastered the serve and volley of lingual ping-pong.   

But some acquaintances suck the oxygen out of the air by talking incessantly. Self-obsession asphyxiates friendships. If I’m button-holed by a bloke who doesn’t draw breath for two minutes, I hightail it to the dessert buffet.

Interrupters also infuriate: my children have perfected the technique. But it’s adult interjectors who should be gagged – those people who leap in and ruin my punchlines, or smother me with their preoccupations. I murmur to myself: “Sorry I was talking while you were interrupting.”

Why can’t bores recognise themselves? Some even refer to themselves in the third person, just so we can appreciate them from yet another angle: “And then the nice girl in Country Road said to me – Barbara Blackwood – you look amazing in that colour. Barbara, that dress goes so well with your tattoo. Barbara, we should name that dress after you – we’ll call it…. The Barbara!”

I, too, used to think my stories were riveting. At 20, I landed my first job in commercial radio: a chick among peacocks. I answered the phones with try-hard sophistication: “96FM , we will rock you!” Teetering in my white stilettos I would carry cups of International Roast to celebrity disc jockeys with velvet tonsils. On Friday nights I would regale my friends: “And then he asked me to be the barrel-girl! Me! He told me to giggle and rustle the entry forms so they made crunchy paper noises, it was sooo cool…”

Before long I caught two girlfriends rolling their eyes at each other across the table. My ego collapsed. These days I tell my stories while keeping my third eye roving for audience boredom.  

Some people like to take over a conversation – they interject about their famous second cousin the soapie extra, or launch into the intricacies of their colonoscopy (scraping the bowels of social convention). Some people feel compelled to convince me that daddy long legs are poisonous but their mouths aren’t big enough to bite people, and if I disagree, they become strident.

At my home in Utopia, my conversational skills are sagging. My 12-year-old cancels me out with his noise-cancelling headphones. Husband is riveted by The Footy Show and can’t be distracted so my three-year-old and I compete for each other’s attention.

Sometimes, when I want to ask my beloved about the state of our relationship, I’ll sidle up to him and say: “Honey, do you remember that night we met in that pub?” And he’ll smile and say: “Yes, blossom, that’s the night you thought talking about yourself constituted a conversation.”