Show Business

Show Business
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 11, 2015

It was raining cats and dogs. My windscreen wipers whined a irksome tune. As I passed the Showgrounds, I spotted a sandwich board. Feline Fanciers Show, it read. Today. 9-4pm

“Come on,” I said to my 5-year-old as we drove through the gates. “We’ve got an hour to kill.”

The cat pavilion was a vast tin shed that smelled strongly of toast and vaguely of tuna. The entrance was fortified with sacks of cat litter, stacked like sandbags along one wall, in case of dog invasion. A small table offered an array of cat show essentials: three knitted berets, four pairs of fingerless gloves and a half a dozen jars of pickled onions.

Inside the hall, a hundred cats were corralled in cages.

“Look mum!” said my daughter excitedly. “They’ve got shiny curtains!” She pointed to the rows of metal crates bespangled with silky drapes and plush padding.

In the first cage, a poufy Persian sprawled across a pink satin pillow. Her tail twitched against a backdrop of matching curtains, the hems studded with rhinestones. A dainty bowl of salmon-shaped biscuits sat alongside her silver tray of kitty litter. She narrowed her eyes at me and yawned. I felt inferior.

“Cage curtains are important for privacy,” said a woman at my elbow. I noticed her windcheater featured a tiger’s head embroidered with gold sequins. She was holding a leopard-print bag filled with knitting. I picked her as a cat lover.

“Cats don’t like to see their competition,” she said knowingly. “And they hate being shown in winter.”

It was as cold as concrete in the cavernous shed.

“If you’re smart,” she w hispered so no-one else could hear, “you match your curtains to the colour of your cat’s eyes. Really sets ‘em off.”

I looked around and saw several cages padded in vivid shades of turquoise and emerald. I admired a Burmese with golden eyes who was trying to tear down his harlequin-striped curtains.

“Are you showing a cat today?” I asked my new friend.

“No,” she laughed. “My show days are over. My Mr Fluff was crowned Grand Premier in 1989. In those days, all I was allowed to put in his cage was a white towel, litter and water. Now they get a boudoir!”

A cat the size of a small lion stared stonily at us from a cage plumped with red velvet.

“I only have four cats now,” she continued. “Marika has diabetes. I have to inject her with insulin twice a day. Lord Louie is a Burmese cross. I named him after Mountbatten. Kismet Hardy is 19 now – he sleeps on top of the microwave.”

She was interrupted by a vile stench. My daughter screwed up her face. “Ewwww” she wailed. “What’s that?”

“Someone needs their bottom changed,” my companion broadcast in a loud voice. The pedigree lion in the red velvet cage stared smugly at me. The stink from his litter tray was making my eyes water.

We moved smartly to the next aisle where a judge was examining a giant puffball on legs.

“Good chin, gorgeous wedge,” announced the judge, but all I could see was snub of muzzle buried in a mound of fur.

“Lovely coat, nice expression,” the judge declared before adding: “This handsome fellow deserves first prize – he showed himself off the minute his toes hit the table.”

A steward in a white coat bundled the winning cat under one arm. Depositing him into the upholstered crate beside me, the steward reached into the neighbouring cage for a new contestant. A hefty grey cat with sky-blue eyes was in no mood to please. He peeled back his rosy lips to reveal a shark-toothed grin and attacked the steward’s arm, snarling and hissing. The steward leapt backwards, slamming the lid. “Bloody Russians,” he muttered. “Ruthless, aren’t they,” I whispered back – just so he knew he had an ally.

He gave me a quizzical look and marched away. Behind me, a Siamese kitten began yowling in a voice as gravelly as a pack-a-day smoker’s.

It was time to leave. My youngster had chosen her favourite cat: a petite Lilac Ragdoll called Bruno. “Took me four hours to dry him,” said his owner as she fluffed his lacy curtains. “He kept attacking the dryer. I got to bed at 2am. By then, there were nine other cats sleeping on my bed!” She giggled self-consciously, before addressing Bruno with a frown: “And who decided to cough during judging, hey? Good time to get a furball, Mister.”

We said goodbye to Bruno and his strange neighbour, a hairless Sphynx called Neil. The rain had stopped and a weak shaft of sun shone through the shed door.

“Can we get a toy?” begged my daughter, pointing to a collection of crocheted cat rattles for 50-cents each.

“Not today, honey,” I said. “But I could be talked into buying some pickled onions.”

On with the show

On with the show
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 27, 2014

When I was 11, Mum and I moved into a duplex in Graylands. In 1978, the posh people of Claremont liked to call Graylands ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’

It was hemmed in between bushland and the railway line at Karrakatta. My nearest park was the cemetery. But it was the maximum security mental hospital that gave Graylands its ignominious reputation.

In those unenlightened days, Mrs Watson, who lived in the front duplex next door, would refer to the hospital in hushed tones as the “lunatic asylum.” Mr Wheeler, the Vietnam War vet from two doors down, liked to spook me by pointing out some bloke swaying up our street towards the corner bottle shop. “Reckon he’s escaped from the loony bin?” he’d whisper.

I’d spin around on my rollerskates to get a better look, just as Mrs Wheeler began scolding her husband. “Ron! Don’t talk like that! No-one gets out of the funny farm unless they’re ‘sposed to.” (Compassion was slow to catch on in Graylands). When anyone asked where I lived, I’d say “Claremont.”

But then Septembers came and for one week, the Royal Show brought Graylands fleeting respectability. I could boast I lived one street behind the Wild Mouse rollercoaster. Kids envied me. And suddenly every adult wanted to park on our verge.

The week before the show, I could smell the change in the air. Perched astride our brick front fence, I’d survey the procession of dilapidated trucks rumbling past, venting grey fumes from grimy rears. Sometimes it was easy to guess what was inside – the lorry carrying the ghost train always had a ghoul’s head skewered on its aerial. Sometimes, the driver would pull a scary face. Sometimes that was his face.

On Saturday mornings, I’d ring my friend Jane in the next street: “Wanna go see the carnie’s?” We’d hang around the showgrounds fence and watch the Carnival people go in and out of their caravans.

The carnie’s liked a Coke and a smoke by day, a bottle of bourbon by night. They rarely sought shelter when dark clouds scudded over Sideshow Alley and the rain sheeted down. As Jane and I huddled under a box tree, the carny crew held fast to flapping tarpaulins while their wet hair plastered their faces and the grass paddock turned to mushy puddles.

The carnies transformed the empty field in front of the Ferris Wheel into rows of rainbow-coloured pavilions. The amusement rides sprang tentacle-arms strung with flashing lights. Lairy signboards shouted names like The Octopus, The Hurricane and Sky Screamer.

Two days before the Show opened, the food vans arrived. Their generators cranked to life and the smell of chip fat and popcorn hung in the air. V8’s pulled horse floats up our street. Prized cows and sheep jostled against yard railings. The reek of so much animal effluvia gave me a runny nose and watery eyes.

At home, I roped off our front verge with a makeshift fence. I painted a parking sign with a big arrow: “CHEAP SHOW PARKING!! ONLY $5.”

The morning before the Show opened, I rode my bike around the neighbourhood making nonchalant inquiries about what my competitors would be charging. Then I sped home and rustled up a new sign: “ALL DAY PARKING ONLY $4.50.” Underneath I scrawled my new slogan: DON’T BLOW YOUR DOUGH BEFORE U GET TO THE SHOW.

“Wish I’d thought of that one!” said Mr Wheeler, the veteran, as he roped off his own verge.

Then he undercut me and slashed his parking rate to $4. After that, I couldn’t even look at him.

On opening day, the first carfuls of show-goers cruised by at 8am and our verge was seven-cars full by nine. I admired the guy opposite inviting scores of cars into his bare backyard, parking them in rows all the way to his back door. I figured he was making $150 a day.

Day and night, the shrill screams of teenage girls aboard the scariest rides would puncture the air. Those screams, pitched between exhilaration and terror, became the soundtrack to our lives during Show Week.

On the rare warm evenings, I’d lean a stepladder against the gutter and climb onto our roof to watch the fireworks. I never tired of the fizz and crackle as the night exploded with stars.

But I soon got bored with my parking business. I’d wake early to discover three cheeky buggers had already snuck their cars under my rope fence and parked for free. Four feet apart.

Thirty-six years later, the showground hasn’t changed much. People still hire out their verges, the hospital’s still open, but Graylands as a suburb is long gone. My teenage home now sits in the re-named “Mount Claremont.” For $700k, you could probably buy it.