Giving Up

Giving Up
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday December 5, 2015

The tree is up. Faux-pine and nuclear-green, it is a six-foot monument to the wonders of PVC and all things ersatz at Christmas. Ours is pretending to be a Norway Spruce. It stands unsteadily on our lounge carpet, tripod legs seeking terra firma beneath two inches of 1990’s plush pile carpet.

I bought our tree second-hand from a school fete. Fifteen Christmases have taken their toll. The tips of its branches have sloughed off their plastic skins to expose wire claws which rake your arm and sting like a cat scratch. Brush against the cellophane foliage and our tree sheds clouds of glitter.

This year I’ve abandoned my tree-trimming fantasies to allow my 8-year-old and his small sister decorating carte blanche. Clearly, they’ve inherited their father’s gene for dressing. They give no thought to proportion or colour coordination. They choke the lower branches with thick black cables knotted with our lumpish hand-me-down lights. Some strands they wind tightly around the trunk, some hang floppy and loose. Symmetry is ignored in favour of attaching a decade of kindergarten craft to the same five branches. An argument breaks out over whose lopsided paper stars are whose, and whether the toilet-roll Santa should hang next to his toilet-roll wife. A red globe blows and takes out its neighbours on either side. Our tree is both festive and fire hazard.

Already, a pyramid of presents leans against the trunk. These are the ones Santa allows me to buy for cousins and nannas. I am the Christmas shopper in our house. Somehow, the job always falls to me. The Grinch I live with abhors what he calls the ‘sad spectacle of materialism gone mad.’ He makes a sterling effort for birthdays and anniversaries, but I can’t enthuse him with a soupcon of Christmas spirit.

“What would you like the kids to get you this year?” I ask as he props at the kitchen bench with his morning paper.

“Socks and jocks,” he intones, without looking up.

“C’mon,” I plead. “You say that every year.” (What he really wants is someone to make a fuss over his December birthday.)

“Well,” I say to his centre part. “I know what I’d like. An extension ladder.”

His head jerks up.

“Only kidding. I’d like some lingerie.”

He rolls his eyes. This is the signal that this year, like last year (and the eight before that), I should buy my own Christmas present. I may even need to wrap it, on Christmas Eve, at midnight, with a pavlova still in the oven. Six hours later, I’ll feign surprise when I open it.

“You shouldn’t have!” I’ll say, throwing my arms around his neck.

Following the script, he’ll reply: “I know, darling. I hope you like it.”

This is the problem with gifting between couples: our expectations get in the way. I see Christmas as an opportunity to find my beloved a gift that symbolises our marital nirvana. He sees Christmas as an interruption to the sports pages.

In relationships, presents come loaded with assumptions, judgments and occasionally, disappointment. Givers guess – and hope to find – the perfect gift; receivers have to figure out the agenda behind the gift and then respond accordingly. It’s exhausting trying to be a mind-reader. Instead, I like to apply my first law of Christmas shopping: be gracious if your receiver is not delighted with your choice of present.

This time last year, I remembered my wannabe weather-man had admired an old ship’s barometer we’d seen in an antique shop window. And so I set about finding him one.

I scoured op-shops and auction lists until finally, a dealer handed me the card of a maritime collector up the coast. He gave me a fascinating hour on the history of ships’ instruments. He’d restored two barometers, one of which was a handsome piece with a circular timber mount and the beryllium and copper mechanism on display.

Back home, I smuggled my expensive treasure inside and wrapped it, folding hospital corners into the shipwreck-themed paper I’d found.

On Christmas morning, el capitan looked nonplussed as he peeled away the paper to reveal his prize. I watched a frown crease his forehead as he inspected his new antique. “It’s from 1907,” I said proudly. “Hand-carved oak and the original glass. See? Restored by a specialist. I drove to Yanchep to find it.”

He looked from the barometer to me and laughed. “You know, darling, there’s this marvellous invention they call the internet? Day or night, you can press a button and it’ll tell you everything about the weather!”

It was at that point I stood up, smoothed my apron and flounced away to check on the turkey.

Perhaps this year, I’ll get him his damned socks and jocks after all.

Talking Shop

Talking Shop
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 9, 2014

Grocery shopping isn’t as fun as it used to be. My local Coles is efficient, but impersonal and bland. I hanker for the shopping strips of my childhood, when a tray of fresh peaches smelt of the sun. Mum would test the ripeness of a rockmelon by lifting it up and pressing her nose against the fragrant dimple where the vine once fed the stalk.

In 1975, all the shopkeepers in my suburb knew me by name. Even when Tracy Sabitay and I got sprung trying to light matches in the laneway behind Mr Rudrum’s electrical shop, Mr Pearlman the pharmacist had no trouble identifying us: “Well, well, well. Tracy and Rosalind I see! Shall we put away the matches or shall I call your mothers?”

The butcher was my favourite proprietor. His name was Mr Butcher, one of those rare but happy marriages between identity and occupation. He was an amiable fellow with a Tom Selleck moustache and Magnum PI’s patience with the lady customers, who vacillated about whether to grace the dinner table with steak or rissoles.

From Monday to Friday Mr Butcher wore a shirt and tie under his blue and white striped apron. On Saturdays, when there were no carcasses to joint, Mr Butcher was luminous in a white coat and matching apron.

Aged eight, I asked Mum about the one-knuckled stump on his left hand where his rude finger should’ve been: “How do you know about the rude finger!” she demanded.

I shrugged.

“Well,” she said, “I know for a fact that when Mr Butcher was three, he put his finger into his father’s mincing machine.”

That story seemed too innocent. As a budding drama queen, I could invent far more bloodthirsty whodunits to explain that missing digit. On our twice-weekly visits to Mr Butcher’s, I took to hoisting myself onto the handbag rail so I could rest my chin on the counter. From there, I could direct all the action.

Enter Ned Kelly stage right. With a metal bucket on his head, I’d have him burst through the door brandishing a rifle as long as his beard: “Gimme all your money!” he’d yell and we customers would dive under the counter. Hearing the commotion, Mr Butcher’d come charging out of the coolroom with a joint over his shoulder and belt the robber over the head with eight pounds of pot roast. ‘BANG!’ The gun’d go off. The bullet ricocheted off the till and tunnelled through Mr Butcher’s hand. I watched in horror as his bloodied finger somersaulted through the air in slow motion. It bounced along the floor, rolling over and over in the sawdust until it came to rest, perfectly disguised as a crumbed sausage.

Satisfied with my ingenuity, I took to being mesmerised by Mr Butcher’s knifework instead. He did his jointing on the lopsided chopping block, a waist-high round cut from a big karri tree. Always chopping from the higher, smoother side of the block, he inched his remaining fingers ahead of his cleaver as he carved up a side of lamb. With a flourish, he whipped out a long slender blade from the knife pouch dangling from his butcher’s belt. Slicing off a rind of white fat, he deftly trimmed the gristle and voila! a dozen lamb chops would be sitting neatly curled on his pad of butcher’s paper. Rolling up the parcel, he leaned over the counter and presented the package to Mum. “There you go, Mrs Thomas, will you be needing some silverside today?”

Like all butcher shops, ours smelled of raw meat and the sawdust that soaked up the drips and drops of scraps that missed the bin. My childish nostrils were easily offended. Following Mum in through Mr Butcher’s front door, I’d screw up my face to block the cloying scent, which vanished as soon as he offered me a slice of polony.

Mr Butcher was the master of customer service. He’d slip into an easy banter about the weather: “Still stifling out there Mrs Fry? When will this heatwave end?”

But then the talk would turn to Vietnam and the Watergate tapes. Or Malcolm Fraser ousting Billy Snedden and my smarts would falter and I’d begin to study the creases on the back of Mrs Fry’s neck.

Even now, I like my service personalised. Grocery shopping has become a chore. But the owner of my nearby supermarket franchise has the gift for making shoppers feel special. He delights his elderly customers by offering to carry their bags to the car. He’ll pack their groceries into the boot, making sure the egg carton is secure, then walk around and open their driver’s door: “See you Friday Mrs Wheeler!” Then he’ll turn to my youngsters riding shotgun on my trolley: “And did you two help Mum today?” They giggle and fib but he gives them a Freddo Frog anyway. They’ll be his customers for life.