It’s all fair game

It’s all fair game
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 12, 2014

In our house, I’m in charge of adventures. The man of the house is in charge of predictability. On Saturday mornings, he sprawls on the sofa with his newspapers (and a crimson knee rug). He’ll stay clamped to the lounge like a limpet until I bundle the kids out of the house, leaving him child-free to confront the weekend’s maintenance project. By the time we return, I hope he’s changed three light bulbs and dug up a deep-rooted collection of sticks once known as the camellia bush.

“Kids who get in the car right now get chocolate Clinkers for the drive!” (Sometimes, bribery replaces reasoning in our house – especially when the Morley toy and hobby fair opens in twenty minutes).

In a micro-second, my two smallest children are scrabbling for their shoes. As brother and sister bolt out the door, I count out the Clinker rations.

Chocolate clinkers, with their pastel honeycomb-insides, have held currency in our family since I was a kid. The pink ones are as rare as Rose Porteous at a Red Dot shop. Most Clinkers are disappointingly green and yellow. If you you bite into a Clinker and it’s pink, you automatically qualify for an extra one. Kids with clinkers can stay amused for ten minutes.

My husband says the Clinker game rewards gluttony and encourages one-upmanship. I remind him Morley is a 20-minute drive. Half way there, with the back seat rations exhausted and not a single pink clinker amongst us, I promise to share out my last two lollies. “Yellow!” announces my boy, inspecting the pastel interior with disgust. “Green!” yells his sister, brandishing her half-eaten stump. I turn into the carpark at the Morley Recreation Centre.

Our clinker defeat is forgotten because the Toy and Hobby Fair is a panorama of toys resurrected from my childhood. Footy-mad son peels away to a table where kids in rival guernseys are rifling through boxes of team posters.

“The Six Million Dollar Man!” I whoop, picking up a creaky board-book with Steve Austin on the cover. “He was my favourite.” I show the pictures to small daughter. I explain that at age 8, I had a crush on Steve Austin: “I’d snuggle into my beanbag and watch him on the telly. He ran so fast in his red tracksuit they had to show him in slow-motion. He was even more handsome in slow motion. He had bionic legs, a bionic eye, and a bionic arm with the power of a bulldozer. AND a built–in Geiger counter.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “And then The Bionic Woman came along and ruined everything. She wasn’t good enough for him! Her bionic legs could only leap two storeys, but he could jump three.” I look up from the book to discover my daughter had slipped away to inspect a carton of Barbies.

My heart gives a little flutter as I spot my beloved game Mastermind on the next table. I recognise the boxer cover instantly – the mysterious gentleman with the air of a James Bond villain, seated at a gaming table. Over his shoulder stood his po-faced mistress, in a sleeveless white dress.

Growing up in the 70s, I’d pit my eight-year-old intellect against Uncle Andy’s code-making skills. Mastermind’s faux-wood pegboard made me feel sophisticated. I never wanted our games to end.

“How much for the Mastermind?” I ask the 30-year-old child behind the trestle table. “Ten bucks. It’s a first edition, you know.” I didn’t, but I bought his Mastermind anyway.

Both my children were now magnetised to a metal box brimming with footy cards. I shuffle along to the next stall. There, leaning against the wall, is Wonder Woman. She still has her big hair and bullet-deflecting bracelets. Her golden lasso is tucked into the golden belt encircling a wisp of a waist. Her suctioned-on starry bloomers are still so tight they make me wince (but how I envy the 5cm gap between her thighs).

I toy with the idea of buying that life-size laminated poster for $69 but I don’t want to risk my husband preferring the competition. I buy her red utility earrings instead, because they’re only $2 and they let me breathe in outer space.

It’s time to go. Seven-year-old son is euphoric, clutching a paper bag stuffed with cast-off footy cards. His sister has an armful of decrepit Barbies.

After lunch, the kids play round after round of Mastermind as the rain dribbles down. Eldest son pits his 13-year-old intellect against my MENSA code-making skills. Then we play in teams. My reluctant gardener, weary from transplanting the camellia, sinks into the sofa to read his Economist, undisturbed. There’s only one squabble the entire afternoon. (Why can’t he ever get up to answer the phone?)

I notice on the box that Mastermind was Toy Of The Year in 1973. It was again in July, 2014.