A Line to the Past

A Line to the Past
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 4, 2015

Kulin seems deserted this Sunday morning. The town’s womenfolk are sleeping-in after last night’s dinner dance. The kids on bikes yesterday must be watching TV. Two brown honeyeaters pirouette noisily overhead. They bank sharply before alighting unsteadily on a power line. Theirs is the only movement on Stewart Street.

My newly five-year-old daughter, keen to explore, kicks up a shower of red pebbles from the gravel footpath. We wander past a derelict shop. In the window is a faded sepia photograph of a swarthy bloke wearing a mug-shot smirk. His white shirt-sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, business-like. My pint-sized companion is captivated by his eyebrows, which sit on his jutting forehead like two hairy caterpillars. I read the caption:

Norm Tyley – the Red-Faced Crooked Butcher.

We turn the corner but the Woolshed Cafe is still shut – no caffeine heart-starter for me. We double-back along Day Street. That’s when I spot a long-forgotten friend. Its concrete roots are planted at the centre of a barren backyard. A galvanised trunk is poker-straight. From its branches, half a dozen frayed and flapping towels strain against their pegs.

This is the Hills Hoist of my childhood. There’s the winder with the black plastic knob. The four canopy arms are the same dull grey as the clouds scudding across the Wheatbelt sky. I can see, across the fences, that almost every backyard has a Hills Hoist. Some are bare skeletons; some are pinned with full loads, newly damp with autumn dew.

“What’s that?” asks my youngster, pointing to the steel tree I’d stopped to admire.

“That, honey, is a Hills Hoist!”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a clothes line.”

Showing no interest in either clothes or line, she resumes scuffing pebbles with the now dusty red toe of her sneaker.

But I’m transported back to my childhood, growing up at Nan’s house, the only child of a working mother. Nan’s Hills Hoist had been planted into a carpet of matted buffalo. It stood sentinel between her outside washhouse and the magnolia tree that overlooked Mrs Anderson’s yard at No. 47.

Mrs Anderson’s Hills Hoist was a newer model and came with a trolley on wheels – Nan called it a jinka – that cradled her washing basket. On the east side at No. 43, the Fry family’s Hills Hoist had been planted so close to their sleepout that every time Mrs Fry swung it round to reach a new piece of line, its metal elbow scraped her guttering.

On slow Sunday afternoons, Mr Fry sat in his easy chair on his concrete patio, using the shade from his wife’s wet sheets to read his paper. Every half hour, the sun would find a gap to blind him, or the wind would conspire to rotate the Hills Hoist five degrees. Mr Fry would haul himself out of his chair, shuffle a few inches to the left, then settle himself down again in the shade of a flapping Bonds singlet, or his wife’s underpants. Mesmerised by the size of Lil Fry’s bloomers, I stickybeaked over the picket fence, watching each cotton leg billowing and deflating like an airport windsock.

Aged seven, my job was to lug Saturday morning’s wet washing to the Hills Hoist and hang it out. Mum would crank the handle until the lines dropped within reach, then I’d wipe them with a damp cloth. She’d unhook the wicker basket of wooden pegs and hang the holder at waist-height from the winder instead.

By the time I was ten, plastic pegs had arrived in a riot of colours. I amused myself by matching peg colour to sock colour. On bumper wash days, I created complementary colour arrangements for Mum’s secretarial wardrobe. A modern-day Van Gogh, I paired yellow pegs to Mum’s violet shirt, blue ones to her tangerine trousers. But I came unstuck if her pale-green tennis top was in the wash, seeing pegs never came in magenta.

Nan said to peg whites with whites, and to hang sheets and towels on the outside rungs, so visitors wouldn’t see our unmentionables. If she dashed to the shops, I used the Hills Hoist like a merry-go-round. Every kid did. Ours creaked and groaned and shuddered violently even under my flyweight. A garden tap staked in the lawn obstructed my flight path. I had to remember to jerk my legs up and over the tap, or it would smash into my knees. More than once the tap won, and Nan would arrive home to find me limping across the lawn. She never said anything. The deep blue bruises were enough punishment.

Back on Kulin’s Day Street, small daughter interrupts my reverie shouting: “Mum! There’s a kookaburra o n the Hills Hoist!” For several moments, I drink in the sight of bird on wire. I wonder how many more totems of my childhood are almost obsolete.

Verge of Excess

Verge of Excess
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 21, 2015

I can feel summer losing its sting. The leaves on the plane trees are curling into autumn, their edges fringed a coppery brown. At 6am, there is dew cooling my bike seat. Best of all, the new season triggers our council’s bulk rubbish collection.

Mounds of gubbins have arisen on verges. Outside No. 56, a black Weber kettle from last century is crippled on the grass. Now a lidless bipod, its rusty innards are exposed. A clothes horse, plastic arms peeling, leans against a tree. Teetering on the kerb outside No. 64 is a bar fridge, door half-hinged, seals shredded. The wind blows it open just as a cyclist hurtles down our hill. He jerks away from the kerb as the door swings at his shins. That’s when I notice three frayed fly swats in primary colours propped in a chipped white vase, a local’s Mondrian homage to dead blowflies.

Pedalling at dawn, I see the heaps have proliferated. A decrepit dishwasher squats outside No. 70. Its dented white door rests metres away. Between appliance and door is a pagoda of flattened cardboard, the boxes for a new dishwasher and oven. A wicker basket sits on top like a crown, filled with Tupperware. For a moment I consider rifling through the containers to see if my missing lids have migrated here. Would anyone recognise me grubbing through the neighbour’s leavings? I eye off the boxes, knowing what great cubbies they’d make. Six sprinklers charge up through the lawn with a hiss. No scavenging for me today. Soon the boxes will be sodden and useless.

You can tell a lot about a household by its detritus. One verge is offering a collection of tribal masks. They look African: some painted with long wooden noses and gouged-out eye sockets, others plain, with unfortunate jug-ears and matted hessian goatees. Bear Grylls must live here.

Next door, a swathe of perfect lawn hosts neat piles of refuse in seemingly perfect nick. Two balding teddies picnic on a bright plaid rug. A shaggy mop and several old brooms are lined up like soldiers. Beside them are three obelisks, each of six floral cushions. Perhaps Laura Ashley lives here.

Our verge, conversely, is a tangle of dilapidated bikes, a leaning tower of plastic planters, two busted scooters (one pink, one blue), a pine bookcase and a tub of tattered shoes. Then there’s the junk I reluctantly abandoned: the stroller whose wheels veer annoyingly left; the playpen that successively imprisoned three toddlers, now out on parole. Anyone passing our home can tell we’ve reared three babies.

The world is divided into hoarders and purgers. I am a purger living with a hoarder who thinks he’s a purger. On collection eve, my hunter-gatherer marches past me with a box of books from the cellar.

Still in my nightie, I spy on him through the front door. I recognise my second-year French books as they spill onto the damp lawn. Then he rats on me to the neighbours, who are deadheading their roses:

“She can’t throw anything away!”

I hear sniggering.

“I heard that” I shout. He wanders inside with a smug grin.

“I’m not a hoarder,” I remind him gently. “I’m just running out of space to put things.”

A van pulls up and a swarthy man leaps from the driver’s seat to capture our bookcase.

“Score!” my husband says in greeting.

The man nods and slides our bookcase into the back of his van, slams the doors and cruises up the street.

Next morning, I make my final pass of the neighbourhood before the council trucks arrive. Nothing new to critique. I sense the purge is complete. I feel a wave of disappointment that my verge entertainment is over.

That’s when an interesting shape catches my eye. I stop pedalling and dismount. Propped against a milk crate is a leg. A man’s lower left leg. Made of peachy-pink plastic, it looks just like a mannequin’s, only there’s a gaping crack along the shin. Sticking out at the ankle is a metal rod attached to a foot. I can only presume it’s a foot because one end of the leg is wearing a worn-out Hush Puppy, laced up over a faded fawn sock.

I get the feeling this is not a rich man’s leg. Or maybe it’s just an unloved leg. I debate whether to knock on the door and ask its owner. Would that be rude? Yes.

So I speed the ten-minute ride home, grab my camera so my husband will believe me, and return to the corner house. To my dismay, the verge is now clear. The whole street is clean. The collection truck has been and gone! As I turn for home, I spot a small metal object shining in the grass. An egg cup? Don’t mind if I do!

Running on Empty

Running on Empty
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 8, 2014

I had always presumed early morning exercisers were chipper creatures, all bounce and bonhomie. I pictured them in their neon lycra peppering their 6am conversations with jaunty clichés such as ‘Life is short!’ or ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead!’

For years I’ve envied early-risers their kinetic superiority, their alertness, their chirpy sociability. Waking up should be a laborious, cantankerous process – and if I’m attempting it, I should be avoided until after breakfast.

Now, I am an early-morning exerciser – by default. At dawn, I disentangle myself from the small sweaty octopus who has crept into our bed and commandeered my pillow. Three-year-old daughter has been unusually generous in allowing me a handkerchief of bare sheet. She and her father are rolled up in the doona like pigs in a blanket.

I stagger out to the kitchen and flick the kettle on, staring mindlessly at the puffs of steam beading the wall with sweat. Tea bag brewing, I lurch out to collect the paper. The box tree nuts are lying in wait for me. Several of them launch their spikes into my left foot, and my sluggish brain jolts awake to record the pain. Bloody box trees!

I drink my tea and command my eyes to focus on the front page. It shifts blurrily before me because my reading glasses are not where I left them on the kitchen bench. I give up on the paper and scoop up some shorts and a T-shirt from the bedroom floor. I strap my two remaining assets into a sports bra, knot the broken laces on my sneakers and blunder out the back door. This may be the only half hour I have to myself all day.

At the corner, I cock my head to listen to a kookaburra in a date palm. A veneer of geniality begins to glaze my brain.

I am awake at last. By the time I’ve jogged up to the playing fields, I have flowered into my agreeable self. A middle-aged woman and her elderly black Labrador cross the path. ‘Morning,’ I chirrup. ‘Morning,’ she barks back, as if taking offence.

Around the oval I go, saluting my fellow early-risers: ‘Hi there!’   

Not one of them greets me first. I turn it into a game: will they or won’t they? Coming past the tennis courts, a barrel-chested man is striding towards me. Ten metres out, I make eye contact, smile and wait for his mouth to move. Nothing. He swivels his head to look at the bougainvillea on the fence. I throw self-consciousness aside and, at the last moment, I hail him with a sprightly: ‘Morning!’ In return, he gives me a sigh tacked on to a grunt: ‘Mornin’ (no exclamation mark).

For a while there, on my pre-Cornflake jaunts, I thought it was me. I mentally exchanged places with these pre-occupied dog-walkers and stony-faced joggers and put myself in their rainbow-coloured sneakers: ‘Oh no! Here she comes again! Jeez, who shuffles like that?! I’m not saying hello to someone wearing a headband!’

This was too awful a scenario to contemplate. Dawn-risers must want to be alone with their thoughts. They don’t want womanly greetings before 7am. They are enjoying the last breath of cool air. They are quietly calculating their superannuation. They’re wondering who Geoffrey Edelsten will marry next.

And then came an epiphany! Maybe my fellow early-risers just can’t be bothered being polite? Maybe they tolerate my ‘Good Mornings’ but are too selfish to reciprocate? After all, why be generous to strangers? Perhaps they think neighbours sharing an oval should be treated with disdain or indifference? 

After lunch, undeterred, I took my annoying pleasantries to the shops. Outside Coles, I struggled to separate two trolleys locked in canine-style congress. I finally wrenched them apart and offered a trolley to a well-heeled older woman. I admired her crisp shirt and smart hair-cut: “You look lovely today.” 

“You mean, for my age?”  

“No, no, I meant, you look very stylish.“

“I’m 81. I should know how to dress by now.”

I was shamed into silence. She weaved away to the delicatessen.

I replayed our conversation in my head. Could she have mistaken my friendliness for impertinence? I decided she probably wasn’t accustomed to fellow shoppers making conversation. I felt disheartened. 

On the next morning’s jog , a stranger charged over the hill towards me. His toothpick legs stuck out of his baggy white shorts and his arms were flapping at odd angles. Mesmerised by his gawkiness, I was caught off guard when he called: “Good morning young lady!” His exuberance was infectious (and not just because he called me ‘young’ and ‘lady’). “How many laps to go?” he shouted. “All three,” I shot back. “Aaah,” he called over his shoulder as he jerked past, “no more pudding for you!”

A stake in the cake take

A stake in the cake take
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday August 3, 2013

Sometimes the mother of all inventions should keep her ideas to herself. But it was a slow Sunday morning, so I suggested we should play pretend shop in the front yard with our favourite kids across the road. The smart alec I live with said: “Why don’t you sell real food for real money!” The kids leapt all over him, squealing his praises.

I helped my brood make gingerbread. They created biscuit men with round bellies and stumpy legs modelled on their father. There were biscuit cats and biscuit dogs who crossbred in the oven and came out fused together in awkward positions. The mum over the road wisely kept her three mess-makers out of the kitchen and produced a fat sponge in record time.

My 3-year-old daughter skipped around in her improvised shopkeeper’s outfit – a ballerina’s leotard that kept riding up to expose one cheek of her bottom. Her six-year-old brother took charge of the till. He found an empty Taco box and sealed it with half a roll of sticky tape. He cut a tiny slit in the top of the box so the coins, needing to be forced through the slot, would make a satisfying thump as they hit the bottom of the box. His father baffled the kids by calling out: “Don’t forget to register an ABN!”

At 2pm sharp, our pop-up patisserie opened for business in the driveway. Pre-primed, the couple from next door wandered up, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the spread. My lad absentmindedly fingered his gingerbreads to make them more appetising. The neighbours chose two pieces of virgin sponge. “How much is that please?” the wife asked.

“That’ll be fifty-cents” said six-year-old firmly.

The wife handed him a shiny two-dollar coin and my son pushed it through the slot in his taco till.

“What about her change?” I asked him.

He looked at me, puzzled. “Nothing comes out of the till, Mum – it only goes in.”

Isobel, the old dear from the corner house, stopped at our gate.

“What are you raising money for?” The kids looked at each other nervously.

“Savings!” said the neighbour’s nine-year-old.

“You are not!” piped up my 3-year-old, “You’re gonna buy lots of footy cards!” Isobel winked and bought two gingerbread men. Two 20c coins vanished into the taco box.

“I wanted to do the money!” wailed my toddler, tearing off her leotard and storming into the house, both cheeks now on display.

Business became slow. Nanna arrived as the neighbour’s kids abandoned shop and went scooting up the street to find more customers. My lad, left in charge, was eating the smartie buttons off a gingerbread man, having already licked off its icing smile and dotted eyes.

“Can I re-sell him?” he asked. “Not to me” said Nanna, “I like my men with all their faculties.”

She handed over a fiver and asked for a smorgasbord. “Don’t expect change,” I whispered.

By the time the shop closed at 4pm, the taco till was rattling impressively. My son, corrupted by his new-found wealth, refused to let anyone help him count out the proceeds. His father growled:

“Listen up! Five of you ran the shop, so five of you share the profits.” Small boy took off up the stairs shouting “It’s not fair! That’s my money – I was in charge of it!”

Delusions of power run in the family. One taste of the free market and my six year old had become a tyrant. At his age, I was greedy too.

When I was six, Mum caught me stealing a pet rock from a souvenir shop in Rotorua. One shiny pebble had caught my eye. It was smooth and honey-coloured with little stick-on eyes. I’m sure the shop owner put those pet rocks on the counter because he knew they were irresistible. And so I reached up and stroked that rock and before I knew it, I was walking out of the shop with my new pet clenched in my fist.

I showed it to Mum. “Look! Isn’t he beautiful?”  

“Where did you get that from!”

Her arm tightened around mine and she marched me back into the shop. Mum yanked me up to the counter and demanded I own up to my crime.

I’ve never forgotten the hot stabbing shame, my stammering apology and the crushing realisation that my silky smooth pet rock was not coming home on the plane.

And here I am, about to teach my six-year-old tycoon why the proceeds from our cake shop don’t belong solely to him.

I find him face down on his bed, still moping. I cut a big hole in the Taco till and shake the money out. He perks up at the sound of paydirt  and helps me sort the coins into piles: “We made fifteen dollars!” he shouts excitedly, “I’m going to buy a soccer net!”

“Not so fast,” I say. “You get $3 each remember?”

“Yes I know Mum. But the shop’s open every day of the holidays. We gotta start making more gingerbread!”