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.

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.

Lending an Ear

Lending an Ear
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 31, 2014

Someone once said train stations are the gates to the glorious and the unknown. As our train slid into Fremantle station, the kids and I spilled out into the chequerboard foyer. I stopped to do up small son’s shoelaces. That’s when I heard a quavery voice over my left shoulder:

“Can you plug me in?”

We were the last passengers left. All I could see were four small grey wheels behind a mobile advertising stand. I took two more steps and realised the wheels belonged to a motorised wheelchair. It was tucked into the corner, backed up to the wall. Its occupant, an old man with rheumy eyes and a grubby green shirt. His woollen vest was peppered with moth holes. He waved a power cable at me.

“Plug me in?” he asked again.

My first shameful instinct was to look away and hurry past.

But he caught my eye and pointed down to a power point: “Can’t reach it. Flat battery.”

He wasn’t irrational. He was stranded – trapped in a comatose machine.

My youngsters scampered over to inspect the mystery man behind the billboard.

I took the cord from his hand, crouched behind his wheelchair and inserted the plug. His chair emitted a shy peep as the battery awoke.

“Where’s your ear?” I heard my four-year-old daughter say. I scrambled to my feet: “Don’t be rude!” I whispered. And then I saw he was indeed missing his left ear. I squirmed at her impertinence, but the old bloke didn’t miss a beat. “That’s what happens when you don’t wear a hat!” he said. He winked at me as small child studied his bald, pink head.

“The sun got to my ear” he told her. “First they cut off this little bit,” and he grabbed the top of his remaining ear. “Then this bit went.” He waggled the lobe. “And before I knew it, I just had a hole.”

This gruesome tale only emboldened my daughter. “Same as a snake,” she said.

I cringed. But the old fellow chuckled, then motioned towards my 6-year-old son who’d been struck dumb by fear or curiosity.

“Got any questions about my ear, son?”

My boy shook his head and inched closer to my side.

“Will you grow another one?” his sister piped up.

“Could’ve, but I’m too old now.”

Satisfied, she took off to play hopscotch on the tiles. Her brother began hopping too.

Why had I been so reluctant to stop and talk to this witty fellow? He was scruffy, but then, so was my four-year-old. He’d unnerved me by calling out, but how else could he attract my attention? Confined to a wheelchair, he was hardly likely to leap out and snatch my handbag.

“Name’s Ned,” he said, and raised his arthritic hand in salute.

“Was it skin cancer that took your ear?” I asked him as we watched the kids, his wheelchair tethered to the power point.

“Twenty years on Koolan Island’ll do that to you” he said. “Worked for BHP. Just a singlet I wore – a singlet and footy shorts. I’m covered in these blasted splotches.” And he rubbed the dark mottles on his arm.  

We fell into an easy patter about harsh summers. And when my youngsters began bickering, I said: “Nice talking to you,” and the kids and I trooped off.

A week later, I’m still thinking about that stranded pensioner. My children are still skiting about Ned’s missing ear. I repeated the story to the German student we’re billeting.

“I would have kept walking,” she said. “In Berlin, we avoid eye contact in the street. We call it ‘wie Luft behandeln.’ It means to look through someone like they’re air.”

Many a time I’ve given a passing stranger a friendly nod and been snubbed. How that irks me!

A sociologist in Chicago reports that commuters who acknowledge each other enjoy their trip far more than those who ignore their fellow travellers. Even a small smile, or a throwaway line about the weather, makes people happier.

Ned’s story about life on Koolan Island made me curious. My laptop told me that in the 60s, Koolan was the largest and most remote iron ore mine in the country. Not much bigger than Rottnest, the island was then home to 900 workers. (Koolan also claimed to have the world’s longest golf hole, an 860 yard, par seven, which doubled as the air strip.)

I don’t want my children being fearful of strangers. Out with me, I want them to be comfortable saying hello to the kaleidoscope of passers-by. I want them to empathise with people who are different.

Keen to keep her ears, my daughter now wears a hat without argument.

All credit to you Ned!

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!”