Losing Control

Losing Control
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 10, 2014

I am at war with my machines. This week, I am at choke point with the toaster. It cannot contain the crumbs from even a single slice of bread. Its crumb tray is like men’s nipples, a useless feature that should have been engineered out of the final design.

I’ve taken to upending my toaster over the sink and shaking it violently until I hear its innards rattle. When it cannot cough up another single speck of bread dust, I give it one last slap to remind it who’s boss and plonk it back into its corner of the kitchen bench.

Next morning, as I pull my machine out to toast my slice of kibble rye, I see it has dumped yet another load of sooty crumbs and flame-grilled raisins from some dark orifice.

I’m already cheesed off with the dishwasher  – a computerised princess who recently gagged on a pea. Or so the repair-man told me when he asked me for $180 to remove it. For three days, a fetid pool of bilge water had refused to drain from the bowels of the machine. To stem the smelly tide, I transferred cupfuls of grey swamp-water to the sink, then got down on my hands and knees and groped around in her murky fundament, hoping to release the blockage. The repair-man thanked me for doing the dirty work and sieved out a lone pea, swollen and grey, but capable of gumming up a sophisticated machine several hundred times its size. 

I’m afraid the house is ganging up on me. The doorbell has begun checking if we’re home by ringing itself at two in the morning. The first time it happened, I was startled awake by the loud peals echoing down the hallway. Suspecting a brazen burglar, my bloke leapt out of bed and began fumbling about in the dark for a weapon. He stumbled over teenage son’s tennis bag dumped by the front door. Fuelled by adrenalin and primed to inflict some racquet abuse, my bloke wrenched open the door brandishing a Junior Prince Warrior, rrp $59.  A cool breeze invited itself in and gusted down the passageway, slamming the hallway door and waking all three children.

Two nights later, our midnight caller struck again. There were phantom chimes during the day as well until my husband ripped the doorbell from its casing. (Visitors now spook us by magically appearing on the back veranda when their volleys of doorknocking go unheard.)

I keep reading scary stories about how our machines will soon do our thinking for us. Human evolution will stall as our gadgetry becomes superior. Bollocks! All my appliances are still hopelessly dependent. Their shortcomings might push my buttons but they won’t do a thing if I don’t push theirs.

We’re yet to get a robotic vacuum cleaner though friends say they’re marvellous. I’m all for handing over my gritty floors to a robo-maid who works tirelessly through the night. My husband says they’re a stupid gimmick and a Hoover needs a human to do a decent job. (This from a man who has never used one.)

I can remember when chess champion Gary Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue in that pivotal victory of machine over man. But that was twenty years ago and I’m not yet being chauffeured by a driverless car. My self-cleaning oven still won’t clean itself.

Boffins predict by 2030, computers will have all but disappeared from sight. They’ll be everywhere yet nowhere, ubiquitous yet hidden, just like electricity and running water, and my children at bedtime. Apple’s iCloud will follow us silently and seamlessly, absorbing our thoughts as we think them. (My dirty ones will stream live to iPorn).

Right now, my computer is attached to an overcrowded power board via a spaghetti junction of cables. The wi-fi regularly goes awol. It’s hopeless upstairs. Last week, I discovered my 13-year-old squeezed into the corner between his bedroom door and his wardrobe, crouched over his laptop. “I’m doing my maths homework. Really Mum! This is the only spot where the wi-fi works.” For once, I believed him.

The next morning at 6am, still half asleep, I nearly garrotted myself on the ethernet cable which teenage son had strung overnight across the stairwell. “What the heck?” I demanded, pointing to the blue cable looped to the walls with globs of Blu-Tack. “Oh, that!” he said. “I ran the internet cable upstairs to get Google.” (All the technology in the world means nothing if you have a teenage boy at the controls.)

For now, I’d like to think I’m still the boss of my machines. At least until my smartphone outsmarts me and incites a mutiny amongst my appliances. That’s when the phantom doorbell will give the signal, the freezer will have a meltdown and my coffee machine will serve nothing but decaf.  

Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 3, 2014

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they behave in a queue. Especially a long one at an airport. Some people do their waiting silently and their fuming internally. Others want everyone around them to know how cheesed off they are. I like to alleviate the boredom by studying the fashion choices of those in my line and making small talk with my neighbours.

“My husband would kill for your jacket!” I said to the moustachioed gentleman in his sixties standing ahead of us in the queue for the economy check-in. (The kids and I were flying to Melbourne for a wedding). His chequered sportscoat ran the gamut of browns, with suede patches on the elbows and leather buttons. “It’s Harris Tweed,” he confided, as he brushed a speck of fluff from one sleeve. “The real thing actually. Got it in Scotland in 1979.”

We went back to waiting. After several static minutes, I noticed Mr Harris Tweed was becoming agitated, checking his phone and sighing loudly. My six-year-old and his little sister counted out loud the twenty-four of us roped into the rectangular maze. Harris Tweed caught my eye and gestured towards the lone attendant at the counter: “How long’s this going to take?”

My small daughter was mesmerised by his handlebar moustache – the way it twirled up at its wispy extremities. Each time he emptied his lungs in a loud huff, the free ends of his moustache fluttered in the updraft, like two tendrils of a vine looking for their next toehold. “Ruddy airports!” he grumbled at me again. “Where’s the staff?”

I recalled why lobbies in skyscrapers are built with mirrors next to the elevators. In the 1950’s hi-rise boom, residents complained about the long wait for the lifts. Putting mirrors in the lobbies gave people something to do –   checking their hair or slyly ogling those around them made the wait feel shorter.

Harris Tweed-man ogled those around him, but not slyly. He turned to me conspiratorially and motioned several bodies ahead. “Will you get a load of that?!” he said in a loud voice. “Reckon he knows how stupid he looks?!” Harris Tweed had me pegged as his ally – I had admired his jacket so he presumed we were like-minded on everything. I was trapped.

I followed his gaze to a young bloke who had what looked like golf tees inserted in the lobe of each ear. A pair of baggy denim jeans clung desperately to his hips as gravity and a scrawny rear plotted his trouser’s downfall. On his head he had a black flat cap with the letters D – O – P – E embroidered across the front.

“Dope!” yelled my six-year-old, eager to show off his spelling prowess. “Mum! That man’s name is Dope!”

“You said it, kid!” said Harris Tweed.

“Don’t be rude!” I warned my boy.

The guy in the Dope-hat turned around to scowl at us as he was called up to the counter. Moments later, clutching his boarding pass, Dope-hat ambled off towards the departure gates, giving Harris Tweed a grin and a sporty wave with his middle finger.

That was all it took. Harris Tweed hissed towards the counter – “How about some service, people?! Ten minutes we’ve been waiting in this line – TEN MINUTES!”

The travellers behind us shifted uncomfortably. “Settle down, mate!” came a gruff voice from behind. I wondered if Harris Tweed’s queue rage would get him hauled off to airport security. But he fell into embarrassed silence. A dominant male had spoken.

Only last week, I inadvertently jumped the line at the bakery. I was scolded by the woman at the other end of the counter . “Excuse me!” she said in tart tones, “I was here first!”

“Yes, of course. Sorry,” I grovelled. She gave me a filthy look and I felt myself shrink in shame.

Most of us don’t mind waiting our turn if we know everyone in a queue will be treated equally and customers are being attended to efficiently. We’ll even invite someone more deserving to be served ahead of us. (The demand for fairness extends beyond mere self-interest).

At the airport queue, Harris Tweed’s patience was about to be sorely tested as he was beckoned to the counter.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” said the lady in a suit, “but this is the Qantas check-in. You’re flying Jetstar. You’ll need to check-in over there.” And she pointed to another restless loop of travellers cordoned off behind another set of ropes.

“Oh goodie,” he sighed sarcastically, and without another word, he grabbed the handle of his bag and strode away to his new queue.

My two urchins and I got to the counter at last. “Sorry about the wait!” said the suit-lady. “Five people have called in sick this morning. Hope you’re not too frazzled!”

“Not as much as some” I said, with a wink.

A Matter of Honour

A Matter of Honour
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 26, 2014

Socialising with the school fraternity is a test of my people skills. As our five-person family veers into the car park overlooking the oval, I can see Sunday night’s Year 8 barbeque is already a mash of teenagers and parents. My 13-year-old wrenches open the back door and gallops away on his giraffe-legs, fearing someone might link him to the mutant herd who just pulled up in the ute. I watch as he camouflages himself amongst a clump of boys grazing from an enormous bowl of chips.

My children’s father bails on me next. He calls over his shoulder as he peels off towards the playground: “You go mingle, Blossom – I’ll give the two small ones a run around before it gets dark!” I heave the picnic basket and a blanket thatched with grass clippings over the tailgate. Schlepping them up the embankment towards the pavilion, I scan the throng for a friendly face.

I recognise my son’s housemaster bearing down on me, his beefy arms toting towers of plastic cups. We’ve met just the once, a brief handshake, amid the melee of new parents at the start of the school year. As he strides towards me, I wonder if I should stop and say hello, or spare the poor man the ignominy of trying to remember whose mother I am. We make eye contact and he nods at me politely. My mouth drops open to greet him, and I squeak like a skittish schoolgirl: “Oh hi Mr Smales!”

He cocks his left eyebrow as he barrels past. I cringe. Mr Smales? What was I thinking? Since when does a mature woman call a grown man Mr? I squirm with embarrassment.

Later, under cover of darkness and emboldened by the sugar hit from my second wedge of pavlova, I recount my faux pas to a seasoned high school mum. “What’s the protocol for parents addressing teachers these days?” I ask.

“First name basis, always” she says matter-of-factly, then titters. “Geez, you are funny! I haven’t called anyone Mr since I was sixteen! How he’d take it?”

“I dunno,” I said. ”But I feel like a halfwit!”

In the 80’s, when I grew up, it was unthinkable to address my friends’ parents as anything but Mr and Mrs Clarke, or Dr and Mrs Potter. The title was proof of the insurmountable distance between us. Such formalities bred respect. Dr Potter and his lofty moniker guaranteed we teenagers were too scared to sample the Dunhill Reds he kept stashed in his office. We nicked our mothers’ Virginia Slims instead.

As a schoolgirl, a teacher’s Christian name was prized information. Huddled in the library, we’d marvel at the chain of events that led Lizzie’s mum, Mrs House, to tell Wendy’s mum, Mrs Downs, who told Wendy, who earned celebrity status by revealing that the ‘real’ name of our favourite Human Biology teacher, Mrs Fisher, was Topsy. Yes! Topsy! Breathlessly we’d whisper “Guess what!” up and down the Year 9 corridor until we converged on Mrs Fisher’s class that afternoon. Our frog dissections were well under way when the smart-alice, back row, stuck up her hand. “Mrs Fisher – is it true your real name is Topsy?” she asked. We froze, scalpels in mid-air. “Don’t you wish you’d married Mr Turvey?!” It was a lame joke, but by now, we girls were hysterical. Mrs Fisher, bless her, was grinning too.

I would do a double-take if anyone called me Ms Thomas. My children’s friends all call me Ros. Or often, Ross (“How come your mum has a man’s name?”)

It infuriates me when tele-marketers from Mumbai call the house and tack a fawning ‘Well Ms Thomas…’ onto the front of their every sentence, presuming their sycophantic charm will persuade me to part with my money.

I try to recall the last time I used someone’s title in greeting. I interviewed Marcel Marceau eight years ago in Sydney, and was firmly instructed by his minder to address him as Monsieur Marceau throughout. I needn’t have been warned, I was already quaking with nerves. I heard later a scribe from a rival outfit had been overly chummy beginning a question with “Marcel…” His interview ended abruptly in an angry flash of white glove.

Driving home from the school barbecue, I asked teenage son if I’d goofed up by addressing his House Master as Mr?

“It depends, Mum. Did you say it in that girly sing-song voice that you get when you’re nervous?”

I was cornered.

“I might have, but if I did, at least he’ll respect me in the morning.” 

The Waiting Room

The Waiting Room
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 19, 2014

Here I am, installed in a leather armchair, having an earnest exchange with a man who knows all my womanly secrets.

I must have sat in his office forty times in the past fifteen years, so familiar is the antique desk, the leadlight window throwing sunlit patterns on the wall. Behind him hangs a haunting Robert Dickerson portrait – a girl with an aquiline face and brooding almond-shaped eyes.

Without turning my head, I know the brightly-lit alcove over my right shoulder contains a waist-high bench topped with a hard mattress and a blue-and-white striped seersucker sheet.

I am sitting in the office of my obstetrician. Except on this occasion, I realise, I can no longer call him my obstetrician, because I’m sadly finished with the fraught business of making babies. Now, he becomes my gynaecologist, a word for making women squirm.

I’m here to remedy a low iron count: a pedestrian complaint for someone who associates this room with both euphoria and dread. On three occasions, it was in this chair I drank in the words I’d waited months, years, to hear: “You’re pregnant!”

On four other occasions, he patted my arm and gently dismantled all hope. “Chin up,” he said as my world collapsed, “we’ll try again soon.”

But today, I feel none of the desperate longing I associate with this room. Instead, I feel strangely bereft, my tummy lifeless and empty. I’m used to seeing the corridor filled with big-bellied women reading New Ideas and stretching restless legs.

Now I am done. No more breathless anticipation, no more lingering over doll-sized clothes in baby shops, or poring over name books, secretly scoffing at my husband’s suggestions. I find myself pining for the see-sawing emotions that ruled my decade of unpredictable fecundity.

I think of those women whose babies never came, who never had an obstetrician. Those women whose dreams of motherhood would slip away, month by month, in the waiting rooms of fertility clinics.

I served my time there too – running late for work, waiting impatiently to be pumped full of drugs that made me moody and morose. I dreaded those appointments – we desperates all lumped in together. “Take a number” the receptionist would say. “The nurse will come and get you in a minute.” I’d stare at the plastic card in my lap, my ticket in this baby-making lottery, and beg the universe to please, make me the one to get pregnant this time. And then I’d feel guilty, because wishing for success might heap bad luck on someone else. We all knew the statistics.

My girlfriends still tease me about my odd affection for the doctor who nurtured me through three pregnancies. The man who, thirteen years ago, laughed at my disbelief as he held up my newborn son and declared: “He’s all yours.”

He’s the same man who made a habit of gripping my hand as I was wheeled into theatre, when fate chose, yet again, to sabotage another new life. I feared I might never trust my body again.  

Now, the obsession with babies is over at last. I am grateful mother to two sturdy boys and a chatterbox in a rainbow dress. I see pregnant women at the shops and feel a mixture of admiration and relief. But when I hear the bleating distress of a newborn I stiffen, my jaw tightens. I am still overwhelmed by the desire to comfort, to quieten the cries that grate on my primal brain.

My girlfriends and I slide through our forties and begin to wonder what’s in store for our bodies? Bits of us no longer in use become troublesome – there are worrying tests, trips to day surgery, procedures needed to keep wayward organs in check. Or worse – removed altogether. Already, two close pals have struggled through a dreaded hysterectomy. I despair for what menopause holds – I’m in mourning for my former riper self.

I’m jolted back to the present as my gynaecologist suggests a course of iron injections. I nod enthusiastically. I’m thankful the tests showed up nothing sinister to explain my unnatural tiredness. “I warn you,” he says. “Those jabs can really hurt.”

I laugh and wonder how many other women have been transformed by their journeys through this office. “I think I’ll live,” I reassure him.

Rolling in Nostalgia

Rolling in Nostalgia
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 12, 2014

Last Sunday I had my first encounter with a Chiko Roll since 1988. We met by chance, that Chiko Roll and I in Cockburn Sound, on a jetty I hadn’t set foot on since I was in pigtails.

Two hours earlier at home, the man of the house had yelled through the back door: “Hey! Let’s go fishing in Safety Bay!” Of course, I knew the fishing was a subterfuge – what he really wanted was to marry two of his favourite things: his Holden ute and a long drive.

Regardless, the kids know to pounce when an adventure’s in the offing. Inside ten minutes, they’d found their shoes and loaded the hand lines and buckets into the ute. They were sitting expectantly in the back seat by the time their father had jemmied loose some squid bait from the back wall of the freezer.

We took the scenic route – past Kwinana’s industrial estate and the fertiliser plant, belching columns of grey steam. It was not yet 4pm, and the Palm Beach jetty was packed. Bronzed kids with glistening skins sprinted past us, daring each other to climb over the railing and dive-bomb into the deep water.

Fishermen were staking out their territory. I took my youngster to the end of the jetty and baited his reel with a blob of squid while his father and sister horsed around on the beach.

For the next 45 minutes, mother and son caught nothing but a baby blowfish. It flopped and squeaked, trying to puff up into something more menacing. Being a novice fishwife, I had to shut my eyes to extricate the hook from behind two buck teeth. I made a ceremony of releasing the captive back to its watery playground but my six-year-old, bored, had already wandered away to find dad.

I packed up and leant against a concrete bench watching the anglers back-lit by an orange sun. Two matrons with matching perms were enjoying the same view. One of them had a half-eaten Chiko Roll in her lap, still in its stripey paper sleeve.

“Wow!” I said. “A Chiko Roll! Haven’t seen one of those in years!”

They turned in unison and laughed. “We still love them, even though they’re bad for us!” the lady in the cream tracksuit replied. She motioned towards her friend. “Tottie and her husband had the fish and chip shop up the road.”

Tottie was inspecting the paper bag in her lap which was turning grey from the spreading bloom of grease. “Chiko Rolls and dim sims went like hotcakes on Sund’y evenings,” she said, “We rolled them in chicken salt and the kids went mad for them!”

I left them re-living the 1970s and tried to remember the last time I had a Chiko Roll. I could still picture the straw-coloured filling flecked with carrot, but could only recall the taste of cabbage. The rest was a mysterious slurry cleverly named to suggest chicken, without promising actual bird. In fact, the Chiko Roll was more or less an Ocker spring roll, a fat tube of carbohydrate designed to be managed with one hand. The ends were cleverly plugged with batter so the insides wouldn’t seep down your front.

I remembered the Chiko Roll being extraordinarily resilient. It could remain edible after days of sweltering under the glare of a roadhouse bain-marie. The outer shell, a deep-fried chamber of dough, could be sat on without it collapsing. I know this because in my twenties, I once rear-ended one, getting back into my car after a pit-stop at the Myalup roadhouse. I didn’t even dent that Chiko Roll, such was the gentle pressure applied by my then-dainty left buttock.

The Chiko Roll has a larrikin’s pedigree. It premiered at the Wagga Wagga Agricultural Show in 1951. Its inventor, Frank McEncroe, a boiler-maker, had welded together his prototype with a flux of egg and flour. He was inspired to experiment after sampling a ‘chop suey’ roll from a stall at a footy match.

His new snack sold out. With a sausage-machine, he began mass-producing the rolls from the back of a fish shop. Surf dudes and top chicks lived on them. I remember the ads featured a sultry leather-clad blonde astride a Harley Davidson, her Chiko Roll gripped at a suggestive 60-degree angle. Mum complained that the lady’s jacket, unzipped to the waist, was ‘sending the wrong message.’ I thought the Chiko Roll was meant to keep its filling intact but here was hers spilling out. I ignored what I didn’t understand.

That Sunday night, under a pink-streaked sky, the five of us demolished a parcel of fish and chips. At the shop, just the one Chiko Roll lay basking under the warmer, next to a shrivelled pair of dim sims. I eyed-off the trio but wasn’t game to buy. Who knows what’s in them? I’m guessing deep-fried nostalgia.

One for the Ages

One for the Ages
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 5, 2014

The gentleman up the road has been scolding me for referring to him in a previous column as ‘elderly.’ He’s 81.

This neighbour is a dapper fellow with a quick wit and rounded vowels. He walks slowly and deliberately. I know his measured steps are not from lack of spunk – he’s wary of the calamity that a fall would wreak on his bones.

I understand his caution. In the past few years I have stopped galloping down stairs three at a time. I no longer leap off the high walkway at the beach to shortcut my route to soft sand. I don’t need to test my physical prowess as I once did. I know I am not invincible.

But I feel guilty for saddling my neighbour with a lazy generalisation like ‘elderly,’ an adjective that does little but paint the lines on his face. Why do we have so few words to describe our later years? Just as we’re getting used to the idea of being middle-aged, we discover everyone younger than us thinks we’re old.

No-one can agree on when a person becomes elderly. Perhaps it’s when we talk too slowly, walk too slowly, drive too slowly. When we’ve given up on rushing, and time moves forward at a stately pace. Gerentologists now talk about the ‘young-old,’ those aged 65-74, the ‘middle-old’ (75-84) and the ‘oldest-old’ (85+).

Driving the kids home from a late swim at the beach, I threw a leading question to the back seat: “How old is elderly?”

Thirteeen-year-old son thought for a moment: “Sixty?”

“Sixty? Are you kidding me? How is that elderly?”

He shrugged. “Sixty’s pretty old you know Mum. People die at sixty.”

He had a point but not one I appreciated. “If someone dies at sixty” I explained, “we say they died too young. Not tragically young. But it was too short an innings. And hey, I’m going to be sixty in thirteen years so watch it buddy!” It was his turn to look horrified.

I decided ‘old’ is a moving target. I am one of the older mums at my daughter’s kindergarten, and one of the younger mums at my son’s high school.

And that made me wonder how my own Mum would describe ‘elderly’, now that she and all her friends are orbiting eighty. A decade ago, she would have defined elderly as anyone 15 years older than her. Now, she’s scrambling to recalibrate her terms. Elderly is anyone who can no longer ride a bike.

I wonder if my eldest son appreciates his grandmother’s ebullience. She doesn’t think of her age as something grim to be endured. She’s always first to suggest trooping off to the oval to kick the footy. She mows her own lawn. She can still outrun her 3-year-old grand-daughter at the park. My mother is one of the fortunate ones: luck and a robust constitution have so far kept serious illness at bay.

But she’s slowing down. I hear her cursing the arthritis that cramps her hands and feet. It pains her to open a door, unscrew a lid, lug groceries. She can no longer grip a tennis racquet. Her golf clubs idle in the boot of her car. I see the cuts and bruises on her arms after she’s pruned her roses. A rogue thorn tears through her papery skin.

To me, Mum has always been of permanently indeterminate age. Last year, stranded after an Eagles game with no trains running, she decided to walk the six kilometres home in the dark. Two police officers stopped to offer her a lift. “You shouldn’t be walking alone at night, Ma’am. Can we drop you home?”

“No thank you, I want to walk. And please don’t call me Ma’am.” (They took her address, drove ahead and sat waiting in her driveway until she arrived safely).

A former television colleague, now in his seventies, warns me: “You’ll feel invisible. At the shops, you’ll go unnoticed, ignored or served last because you’re not busy – you’re retired! I refuse to be treated that way. But if I complain, I’m just a grumpy old bugger!”

Few of us feel as old as we look. My neighbour pretends old age isn’t happening. And in his head, it isn’t. Body willing, I intend to choose when to act old. Then again, I might change my mind when I get there. If I still have it.

Leave Me Alone

Leave Me Alone
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 29, 2014

When was the last time you spent 24 hours alone? An entire day and night without human company? For me, it’s been decades. I now find it faintly ridiculous I spent so much of my early life trying to avoid being by myself.

The idea of a Saturday night at home was once unthinkable. I couldn’t imagine aloneness being enjoyable. Twenty years later, a Saturday night-in is a relief. I’ve lost my appetite for nightlife. Somewhere between giving birth to my third child and waking up on the wrong side of 45, wild partying and seedy Sundays no longer appeal.

Many of my friends remain the most social of butterflies. On weekends, they invariably ring to see what excitement the bloke and I have planned for tonight. I consider a giant fib: “Oh! We’re out to dinner! Yes! Yes! Some place new!”

Instead I feign nonchalance: “Actually, nothing! – we’re staying home.” There is an uncomfortable pause. “Nothing? Are you okay? What’s happened?” (Happy homebodies have no social status.)

A friend reels off her guest-list for tonight’s dinner party. I feel envious of her enthusiasm but not of the 2am finish, the stockpile of dirty dishes or the dawn summons of three children demanding their breakfast.

Perhaps we’ve confused ‘alone’ with ‘lonely.’ We sympathise with people whose aloneness has been forced upon them: the solitude created by grief, or illness or lack of independence. But self-inflicted seclusion is not yet an acceptable form of selfishness – that’s for those we label ‘eccentrics’ or worse, ‘misfits.’ I’d like to think there are loners who are perfectly content.

My husband has always delighted in being a lone wolf. He’s one of seven children (born in nine years, which only intensified the congestion). For him, there is no greater joy than time spent alone. His idea of utopia is an entire weekend free to dig up the garden, absorb the newspapers and catch back-to-back footy games. Preferably all three undertaken in silence. I fear I’m disappointing company!

My first taste of solitude came, aged 27, after moving to Sydney for a new job. I landed in the middle of summer, but mistook it for winter: the oppressive battle-ship grey skies and constant drizzle, the air clammy with humidity. Home was a dank two-bedroom flat shared with a work colleague I barely knew. Homesickness came in waves on weekends. I found being alone disconcerting, even intimidating.

One Saturday morning, with my flat-mate away, I ate round after round of jam toast and allowed my mind to speculate on catastrophes. What if I choke on this crust? How long before someone finds me – my body propped against the kitchen cupboards, contorted with rigor mortis, surrounded by crumbs and sticky drips of apricot jam. Even my fantasies were pathetic.

I decided if I must endure a weekend alone, I’d leave my death to fate and mingle with strangers instead. I walked from Neutral Bay, across the Harbour Bridge, marvelling at the giant scale of my new city.

I sat idling in cafes, the outsider, studying the myriad faces of the city’s inhabitants, inventing histories to go with the snippets of conversations that drifted past me on the footpath. My solitude began to feel good.

That night, I took myself to a movie. I chose Apollo 13, hoping for a happy ending. I stood self-consciously in the line, hemmed in by hand-holding couples and old friends swapping new gossip. “How many?” said the usher, as I shuffled towards the stalls. “Just the one” I said. He shone his torch down the aisle. “There’s a single seat on the end of Row G,” he said, spotlighting the one solo seat amid a dim sea of heads. Two matrons on a big night out swivelled in tandem to check out the singleton about to flop down beside them. “We’ll keep you company!” one said, and offered me a Fantail. I was touched.

Today, I reign ineffectively over three exuberant, exhausting children. On those afternoons when their pre-dinner tantrums threaten a brain snap (mine, not theirs) I fantasise about running away from home. Yesterday, mustering my herd for school, my teenage son lit my fuse by refusing to take a shower: “Geez Mum” he shouted. “I smell fine! Calm your farm!” I would have, but I was already tussling with his little sister, who was shrieking her objections to hair brushing.

I’ve made my goal this year to seek more solitude. On kindy mornings, I will despatch all three children to school, ignore the dishes and lie deep-breathing in the sanctuary of our unmade bed. I will revel in the brief stillness of my empty house and feel liberated.

That’s the kind of loner I want to be.

Bugger of a Bedfellow

Bugger of a Bedfellow
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 22, 2014

No-one warned me that the older the house, the bigger the insects. I’m spooked by the mutant army of up-sized bugs who’ve been invading our 1904 brick bungalow.

The Daddy-Long-legs have taken up squatting rights above the shower and patrol there on stilts. Their extended family has taken over the cornices in our living room. I suck them at warp speed into the vacuum cleaner but they travel around in it like a caravan. I know this because when I last opened the lid to change the bag, a Daddy-long-legs crawled out from inside the cavity and took off to inspect the spare bedroom.

I am horrified at the cockroaches with Dreamliner wingspans that power through the back door at sunset. The mosquitoes navigate the holes in our flyscreens like stealth bombers, then roar through my shower of Mortein acid rain.

This summer, the Cape Lilac overhanging our back fence was stripped bare by swarms of hairy black caterpillars. By day, they abseiled by the dozen down the wall and lazed by the pool, scaring the children. Even the birds seemed daunted by such a spiky smorgasbord. In the late afternoon, those caterpillars were scaling the fence back to their leafless roost, shuffling in a seething mass from one side of the tree to the other to remain in the shade.

But nothing could prepare us for the strange bedfellow who joined us for a three-way frolic at 11pm. At first I thought the soft rasping sound was an ingenious variation of foreplay – the sound of a thicket of manly leg- hair rubbing up against my calf. My erotic illusions shattered as the owner of the leg cried into the darkness:

“What the heck is that noise?”

“The house?” I ventured, knowing how the bones of old homes creak and groan at night. “Actually,” I said, “it sounds like it’s coming from IN THE BED!” And with that, I panicked and jabbed at the switch on the bedside lamp. My Greek god leapt up in a flash of red shortie pyjamas, followed a microsecond later by a ripple of tummy. I scrambled to get behind him as my human shield flung back the doona.

At the bottom of the bed, a grotesque insect scrabbled to shrink from the light. It was as wide as my palm, Gravox-brown, with an articulated abdomen like a fat grub and thick stumpy front legs attached to the sides of its head. This thing made E.T. look like George Clooney.

“What IS it?” I yelled as my husband grabbed his prized Spectator magazine and swatted the beast clear of the mattress. It nose-dived into the carpet, landing upside down with its four spindly hind legs in the air. In the next instant, it performed a half twist somersault and righted itself. My husband was as intrigued as I was repulsed.

He warily scooped it up with his magazine and liberated our captive in the parsley patch.

I slept fitfully for dreaming about our creepy intruder. The next morning, I went in search of the entomological explanation. It was, in fact, a Cylindrachetid – a sandgroper – that rarely-seen insect that’s been the nickname for West Australians since South Australians became crow-eaters and Queenslanders, banana-benders.

How we Western sophisticates came to be synonymous with this grub-ugly crawler remains a mystery. Was it the Gold Rush that started it? In 1896, the Fitzroy City newspaper reported that WA’s ‘Sandgropers’ would rather Victorian ‘T’othersiders’ ‘grope in their own soil a little more, instead of rushing in such numbers to dig up West Australian treasure.’

And yet in my lifetime in Perth, I’d never seen a single sandgroper. I’ve questioned friends about sightings but no – they hadn’t seen one either. Apparently sandgropers are common inhabitants of Perth’s dunes and sandy plains, but their subterranean lifestyle precludes them from joining our summer barbecues.

I vaguely remembered Fat Cat and Percy Penguin having a chirpy yellow friend called Sunny Sandgroper on children’s TV in the 70’s. But he was a cute stuffed toy created in the image of a happy caterpillar, not modelled on this burrowing recluse.

A week later, I was startled by a rustling noise in the pantry. Home alone and fearing a jumbo roach, I armed myself with an egg flip and bravely kicked aside three boxes of cereal. Flailing on the floor behind the Rice Bubbles was another sandgroper.

The neighbourhood lawn-mower man had his own theory. “You disturbed them,” he said. “That bob-cat that dug your pool’s the culprit. I reckon they came after you to pay you back!”

He laughed raucously at the idea of a sandgroper in our bed. I giggled uncomfortably, then gave thanks the blighters don’t fly.

The Parent Gap

The Parent Gap
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 15, 2014

It was the day before council rubbish collection. Clapped out washing machines and ruptured armchairs squatted on the edge of the road, homeless. Broken cots and grubby playpens joined the exodus, outgrown. I felt obliged to take part in the neighbourhood cleanse. I dragged the rusty skeletons of two tricycles from the verandah and dumped them on the verge.

Those trikes were once the pride of our fleet. As a toddler, my six-year-old son would choose between his mounts and we’d trek to the shops, his little feet pedalling frantically to keep up with my strides. When his legs gave out, I’d hitch his wagon to my waist with a rope. I’d wrap the free end several times around my wrist, take up the slack and tow him home. We went everywhere tethered together, he and I, with his trio of plastic wheels grinding noisily along the footpath.

And then my rose-coloured reminiscing came to a crashing halt. My memory served up a sudden and embarrassing reminder of parental neglectfulness… Somewhere between giving birth to his baby sister and showing him how to tie his shoelaces, I’d forgotten to teach my middle child how to ride a bike.

He didn’t even have a proper bike. He’d leapt straight onto his big brother’s cast-off scooter. We’d missed the two-wheeled stage altogether. I felt a jolt of mother-guilt.

That afternoon at the park, I got chatting to another mum as our tribes tore up and down the path on their scooters. “This’d be just the spot to learn to ride a bike!” I said. “Your little girl?” she asked. “’Fraid not!” I laughed, “my six-year-old.”

“Oh dear!” she said. “You’re a bit late! We just got our four-year-old a BMX.  We took off his trainer wheels when he was two. People would stop to ask us how old he was!”

I felt belittled, but clucked admiringly so this stranger could puff up with pride over her two-wheeled wunderkind.

On the walk home, I wondered if she realised how smug she sounded. Was her gloating a leg-up for her or a put-down for me? Parental one-upmanship, I decided. But that raised another uncertainty: Why aren’t all mothers on the same side?

I’ve spent many an hour agonising over my child-rearing. Am I too strict, or not strict enough? Should I stop trying to be my teenager’s friend and concentrate on being his parent? Will my children remember me as the  affectionate mum who served up crepes for breakfast and drove them to school when it rained? Or will they be scarred by my shrieks about unmade beds, misplaced shoes and wet towels staining the carpet?

It’s humiliating enough when their father pulls me aside to deliver a biting reproof: “Settle down, Blossom, shouting at them won’t get you out the door any faster.” But I’d like to think I could rely on the sisterhood for reassurance and a measure of compassion.

Perhaps being a kind and devoted mother is not enough any more. Parenting has become a competitive sport. Successful mothers must demand perfection of themselves and their children. I see mums who are exhausted from dragging children from piano lessons to acrobatics, from jazz ballet and swimming training to soccer practice and chess club. Forget trying to keep up with the Joneses – try keeping up with the Joneses’ kids!  

Motherhood is now a profession: over-scheduled, manic, stressful – much like the television job I put on hold to have some longed-for time-out with my children.

Twice now I’ve been asked why my pony-tailed three-year-old isn’t doing ballet or gymnastics. I try to look nonchalant: “Oh, you know, we’re just happy mucking about at home.” But right there, I’ve pegged myself as a non-competitive mum. Or worse – as a uninterested mum indifferent to her daughter’s potential stage career.

Here’s my quandary: What happens when our baby Einsteins and Shirley Temples grow too big to be coddled and coached? What if we’ve invested so much of ourselves in our children that their failures become our failures? How will our kids learn from their mistakes if we’ve engineered their childhoods so there aren’t any?  

As far as I can tell, my children are not gifted. Not one of the blighters has rewarded me by becoming a child prodigy. But they display all the genius required to dodge their mother’s requests to clean up their rooms, finish their homework and unpack the dishwasher. Who knows when they’ll discover their worthwhile talents?

In the meantime, I’ve committed myself to the park for the entire afternoon. I’m now determined to teach our six-year-old to ride a bike – because it’s fun. I don’t need a Cadel Evans in the family but I hope my youngster takes to cycling with gusto. I could do with something to brag about.

Robo-Shop of Horrors

Robo-Shop of Horrors
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 8, 2014

I am being bullied by a machine who delights in being a shrew. We were wary of each other at first, that self-serve checkout and I. I tried not to think of her as a dictatorial tin can. I scolded myself for feeling intimidated by her sophisticated touch-screen interface and her beeping castigations. After all, she was one of a dozen talking robots designed to speed me through my  supermarket. We should have been friends. But it was clear from the start she had no interest in our relationship.

Maybe her automated woman’s intuition sensed my electronic incompetence. Perhaps she enjoyed lauding her artificial intelligence over my evolutionary one. Every time we met, she stared at me with her omnipotent eye, awaiting my first move.

I was moving all right – with both hands I was cartwheeling and somersaulting my Shortbread Creams in desperate pursuit of a bar code. Just as I finally located it on the inside of the underside flap, she announced loudly in a patronising tone: “Please scan your first item.” Her voice had the kind of velvety smugness my husband finds attractive. I felt a hot rush of jealousy. How dare she speak to me this way – me, the customer she was built to serve! I was on war footing with the talking robot at Coles.

I slapped my bananas onto her scale. “Key in item’s code or look up item” she demanded. I dutifully selected bananas while muttering about her lack of prepositions.

“How many?” she wanted to know.

“Can’t you see, cyclops?” I gloated. She was silent. I rolled my eyes and tapped in the number six.

 “Place item in bagging area.” I obediently dropped the bananas into the bag. She paused. “Unidentified item in bagging area” she said. I lifted up the bananas and let them fall in again.  “Item is not in bagging area.”

“Yes it is!” I shouted. “They’re right there! In the bag! Are you stupid?”

And then above her annoyingly square head she flicks her green beacon to an angry red.

I am trapped between this ogress and my overflowing trolley. I swivel my head  trying to catch the attention of a human in uniform. I see the shoppers behind me shift impatiently from one foot to the other. A young mother tears open a packet of Maltesers to pacify her whingeing toddler but the bag splits and the contents shower the floor.

I hail the blue-haired checkout boy from aisle six who raises his index finger to indicate he’s on his way. He plonks a plastic triangle on his conveyor belt that reads: ‘Let us serve you at another location.’ His next-in-line customer sends me eye-daggers.

Teenage employee arrives at my stalled machine and huffs: “The self-service attendant just ducked off to the loo. Bloody machines can’t fix anything by themselves!” He swipes the screen with a plastic card and my electronic she-devil springs to life.

“Please scan your next item,” she says to me sweetly, but I know she’s just flirting with the checkout boy, because he pats her stainless steel rump and trudges back to his cash register.

I am now embarrassed by the holdup. I resume scanning the contents of my trolley knowing a dozen pairs of impatient eyes are boring into my back.

“Remove unidentified object from bagging area” the she-robot barks.

“No,” I whisper urgently. “That’s the complimentary packet of pegs attached to this new washing powder.”

But she’s not buying my story and gleefully jams on her red light. I turn a shade of tomato myself. This can’t be happening! I lift out the washing powder and thrust the peg packet roughly up against her inky screen. “See!” I hiss. “They’re stapled on. The pegs come with it. It’s a sales gimmick!” And in a fit of pique I give her a secret kick with my left sneaker but she doesn’t flinch under her metal skirt. 

The self service attendant, fresh from his toilet stop, marches over: “I saw that,” he chides me. I gaze across at the manned checkouts and realise every customer I began with has finished and gone. I look to my right; my neighbour is also looking aggrieved. His machine’s red light is now blinking a slow waltz with mine. “Having fun yet?” I say.

“I just want this damn packet of chewing gum!” he says. “It doesn’t weigh enough to register.”  

“I’ve had it up to pussy’s bow with my machine, too. She’s been giving me a hiding.”

He nods sympathetically and points to his fem-bot who is chanting: ‘Select from popular items or look up item alphabetically.’

“With that kind of attitude,” he says, “no wonder she’s still on the shelf.”