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.

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.

Not Yet Booked Out

Not Yet Booked Out
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 13, 2014

The sight of so many books made my heart skip. Thousands of them sat pressed together on tables, a sea of spines, filling the University of WA’s Winthrop Hall. A smiling fellow with a silvery moustache stood by the door in a black apron. “Half price today,” he said. “We’re open ‘til 9.30 tonight.”

A hushed crowd inched along the tables, heads bowed over the vast array of titles. I could hear the gentle fluttering of pages, the murmurs of quiet conversations, an occasional soft thud as a heavy book was shut. The ceiling fans circled lazily.

I wandered over to a table piled with old tomes. I prised free a mottled-green volume. It was a book of Robert Browning’s poetry, printed in 1908. I ran a finger over the embossed gold lettering and opened the cover, inhaling the musty sweetness of its ageing paper. The flyleaf was inscribed with a beautiful handwritten cursive, all graceful loops and flourishes: ‘Mary – Ad finem fidelis – George’

The kindly doorman in the black apron happened to be standing behind me and craned over my shoulder. ‘Faithful to the end’, he said quietly. I smiled my ignorant thanks and admired George’s penmanship anew.

The pages of Robert Browning’s verse felt thick and coarse. They were handcut, some snipped a centimetre shorter than their neighbours. As I fanned through them, a rose petal slipped from between two pages and fluttered to the floor. Featherlight in my palm, the petal had once been crimson, but was now yellowed with age and puckered from the weight of a hundred pages. It had been pressed against a poem on page 138, ‘The Last Ride Together.’ I was intrigued.

…What if we still ride on, we two

With life for ever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,

The instant made eternity, — ”

Had the petal been pressed by George or by Mary? Or by some later owner? Did this gift mark the beginning of a love story or a reconciliation? I decided good books don’t give up all their secrets at once, and tucked Browning under my arm to ward off other browsers.

Standing to my left was a matron who’d picked up a scuffed leather-bound book with loose joints and torn hinges. She was elbowing her husband and tittering. Her husband was feigning interest but he himself was absorbed in a book about submarines (fancifully titled Up Periscope).

Tired of trying to hold his attention, she caught mine instead and proffered the ragged book. “Have a look at this!” she said. “It’s priceless!” I read the cover: The Witches Broomstick Manual. On the frontispiece, the illustrator had attempted a flattering portrait of a hag astride her broomstick, silhouetted against a full moon. The subtitle read: The Construction, Care and Use of the Witches’ Broom; Complete with a Course of Flight Instruction.

“Just what I need!” I replied. “The broom I’ve got at home is useless!”

I flicked through the soiled and spotted pages, stopping at a chapter on “Air Safety.” I read aloud to her: “Only fly at night. Avoid areas of military or political sensitivity. Study the stars and learn to guide by them. A small flashlight will be of immense value aloft. Your speed and height are limited only by atmospheric pressure and the prevailing weather. Be warned: daytime flying will cause trouble.”

“No kidding,” she said and we both giggled. The next paragraph concerned seatbelts: “A strong belt or rope tied around your waist should be fastened to the Besom (broom), so that you may be rescued after a possible separation. It may seem undignified to come in for a landing dangling at the end of a rope, but pride is no substitute for safety.”

“Marvellous!” she said. Her husband turned to me and sighed: “Please don’t let that book come home with us!”

I wedged it carefully back into the pile and the couple drifted to another table. All around the hall, people were moving in slow rotations, engrossed in the quiet pleasure of book inspections. Most had a selection concertinaed along one arm. Those with too many to carry were offloading books into boxes, stacked in clumsy pagodas against the wall.

Perhaps, despite our gadgetry, we will always turn to books for comfort? For consolation, or stimulation or escape. Maybe books are the only true magic? I headed for the exit and handed over the book of poetry wedged in my armpit.

“Aah Robert Browning!” said the woman at the counter. She admired the cover, then gently opened it to find the price. The book fell open at George’s Latin inscription to Mary and she looked at me quizzically. “Faithful to the end,” I said. “How lovely,” she said. “That’ll be $6 please.”

Reality Bites

Reality Bites
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 6, 2014

“I’m trying to get the kids excited about the power of words,” her email said. “They are selecting subjects (for the rest of their lives).”

It was a letter from a high school English teacher, asking if I’d talk to her Year 10s. I cast my mind back to last century and tried to remember being 15.

That was the year I rolled down my camel-brown school socks until they sat like a pair of bagels around my ankles. I thought those bagel-socks made my legs look longer and shapelier. Really, I just looked like someone who needed to pull her socks up.

Aged 15, I went to my first school dance in a raspberry dress paired with mum’s Glomesh clutch hoping I’d be mistaken for Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman. I fantasised about sashaying past some Richard Gere look-alike in my white snakeskin court shoes and overhearing him whisper to his mate: “Look at them bodacious set of ta-tas!” Instead, I spent the night dancing with another Debra Winger I met in the ladies.

When I was 15, adults persisted in asking me: ‘So! What are you going to do when you leave school?’ I’m sure these were grownups who hadn’t talked to a teenager since they’d been one. Their inquiry, loaded with expectation, would hang awkwardly between us. I knew my interlocutor was hoping to hear me say: “Actually, I’m thinking of becoming an astronaut!” That would give them the starter they needed to slide easily into a conversation with this sullen teenager: “Wow! An astronaut hey. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?”

Instead, I said nothing. I’d inspect my bagel-socks: “I dunno.” I took a 15-year-old’s delight in having silenced my interrogator. Our heart-to-heart would be paralysed by rigor mortis and I’d be granted a getaway.

Aged 15, my school’s career counsellor demanded I choose a profession, if only so she could book me in for a week of compulsory work experience. My girlfriends were desperate to impress as wannabe veterinarians and architects and stockbrokers.

I decided I’d do work experience as a dental nurse. It was an odd choice given I was scared of the dentist’s. But I figured dental nurses couldn’t be scared of dentists, could they? More importantly, I might get to wear one of those pink nurses’ uniforms with a little watch hanging from my breast pocket. I could twirl my hair into a bun and wear soft-soled shoes.

And so I arrived at 8am outside the shiny white doors of my designated dental surgery. The dentist seemed friendly and not-so-scary, but I think that was because we were both standing up.

All that week I made excellent cups of tea. I presented miniature toothbrushes to little kids. I gave knowing smiles to all the patients sitting glumly in the waiting room.

On the last day, the dental nurse called in sick. The dentist asked for my help with a patient. Puffing up with pride, I tied a perfect bow on my crunchy paper apron and blew a lungful of air into my washing up gloves, the way I’d seen Delvene Delaney do it on The Young Doctors.

A very old man was reclined in the dentist’s chair. He was staring at the ceiling with his mouth stretched open. The dentist presented me with a long metal nozzle. He called it a high volume evacuator, but I can tell you now, it was a saliva sucker.

The dentist put on his pretend glasses, and began drilling a putrid incisor. I gingerly inserted my metal probe into the patient’s slackened mouth, trying to steer it inside his cheek and down beside his gums towards his one remaining molar. But the nozzle had other ideas. It lurched sideways and suckered itself to the root of his tongue.

I panicked as the old man gagged and gurgled. I couldn’t tell if he was talking or choking so I yanked on the high volume evacuator. I thought if I jerked it hard it’d break the suction from his tongue. But the patient only yelped in shock and pain. His arms flew up and knocked over a tray of instruments.

That’s when the dentist grabbed my hand and shoved me aside. He gently let a puff of air escape from the nozzle which released the suction. The old man’s tongue flopped back into his mouth.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in dentist’s detention, tidying up the magazines. And then I slunk home.

A weekend later, back at school, the work experience report cards were handed out. Mine said: “I don’t think Miss Thomas has the necessary skills or temperament for the dental profession.” I was mortified. As were several of my teachers. I don’t think they’d had anyone flunk work experience before.

So I decided to become a journalist instead. And now I embarrass myself for a living.

Shooting the Breeze

Shooting the Breeze
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 30, 2014

I was curious. I’d run past them before, always on a Monday morning. As I hugged the perimeter of my local playing fields, I caught sight of their frolicsome little group at the bottom of the hill. It was barely 7.30am. A dozen middle-aged men and women were silhouetted against a weak-willed sun, lugging strange equipment across the damp grass.

Lolloping past them on my first revolution of the park, I saw that they’d settled into a row of director’s chairs and were strapping their wrists and fitting fingerless gloves. Surely archery’s a summer sport, I thought, but they seemed oblivious to the chill wind.

When I panted by on my second revolution (there’s rarely a third), I saw they’d marked out the range with red flags and were sighting their bows against the targets.

I braked to a walk and sidled over to a big man propped in his chair, a whistle resting on his tummy. “You must be freezing!” I said, hoping my opening gambit didn’t sound lame.

“Not as cold as Robin Hood here!” replied the man, elbowing his much smaller neighbour, resplendent in Lincoln green. Robin Hood tipped his bucket hat at me. He’d flipped up the back brim, giving his hat the jaunty air of a trilby. A cluster of moth holes ventilated his thin jumper.

I motioned to his armguard and fingertabs. “I didn’t know archers needed so much protection. What’s this for?” and I pointed to the hammock of black netting rigged under his armpit and across one manly bosom.

“Oh, that’s his man bra!” said a rangy fellow with a Scottish brogue, standing to my left.”

The Scotsman’s bow was a fearsome contraption with a network of wheels, strings and cables. “This bow has a draw weight of 52 pounds,” he said. “When you let go, you don’t want the bowstring skinning your arm.

“That sounds painful.”

“Jim’s a Scot!” piped up Robin Hood. “He doesn’t have feelings!”

I turned to watch one of the ladies. She steadied herself and fitted an arrow into her bow. In one fluid motion, she dug the string into her cheek. Squinting through her peep sight, she released three fingers and the arrow streaked across the range and sank into the target.

“How hard is it to get a bullseye?”

“We don’t call it a bullseye anymore,” said Pete, the man with the whistle. He blew it twice to halt the archers, then led me to the targets.

He pointed to the two central circles of yellow orbited by red, blue, and black. “Six arrows in the gold is called a Golden End. Get ‘em all in this inner circle, see, you’ve scored yourself a Perfect End. And if they’re in the grass, you don’t tell anyone!”

“How many Perfect Ends have you had today?” I asked Robin Hood as he retrieved his arrows.

“Mmm – two or three?”

Jim guffawed: “This year?”

“Leave it out, fellas!” said Robin Hood, giggling. “You know I’m almost blind in one eye!”

He explained as we made our way back to the shooting line. “I was a long distance runner. I pounded the pigment off the back of my iris. Ended up with glaucoma. No more running. Now when I see you joggers I want to yell out: ‘Stop or you’ll go blind!’

So I took up biking, and I rode past this mob one day: ‘That looks like fun!’ My first arrow hit the gold. Second arrow – hit the gold. I’ve been trying to hit it ever since!”

“How well can you see the target?”

“Well, I just aim in the general direction!”

“And that’s why no-one wants to stand next to him!” called Jim.

Pete leaned in and said softly “Jim’s a Grand Master Bowman. You won’t meet too many of them. He’s in the top 5-percent.”

“Impressive,” I said, and stood back as Jim selected an arrow with white feathers and strained back on his bow. The arrow vanished into the far grass.

“Sheesh!” he said. “Bet I’ve lost that one. Sometimes they fly so low they go underground. You need a metal detector to find them.”

Robin Hood grinned. “This is no place to come looking for sympathy,” he whispered as he pulled an arrow from the quiver belted around his waist. “An archer only competes against himself. You’ve gotta brace yourself for failure.”

I shuffled backwards, mindful of his iris issues. “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder. “I shoot with both eyes open!”

I lost track of his arrow the instant it loosed, but he turned and winked at me so I knew he’d hit the gold.  

It was time to go. I thanked the friendly bowmen, waved to the women and broke into a gentle jog for home, reminded yet again, I know nothing.

When Darkness Falls

When Darkness Falls
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 23, 2014

It was the wind that startled me awake. A gust outside the window buffeted the hibiscus against the gutter. The screeching of wood on metal unsettled my ears. A branch thumped loudly and my heart joined in. I closed my eyes, chastised myself for being lily-livered, and tried to summon sleep. It was no use. I was spooked.

I swung warm feet onto cold floor and padded out to the kitchen, catching sight of the oven clock: 05.22. What now?

I put on my running gear and tiptoed out the door. The dark was thick and soupy. I couldn’t see where the slabs of footpath beetled over one another, eager to trip me. My street felt foreign and menacing. Was I stupid to run at this hour?

Only the house on the corner was aglow. At a desk behind a sash window, I could see a man in a dressing gown, outlined in cheery yellow lamplight. I felt briefly comforted, then turned into the next street and the gloom enveloped me anew. I strained my ears, hoping to hear the first kookaburras calling to each other from the salmon gums, but the wind had dropped. The air was still and silent.

My imagination goes into overdrive at night, especially when my husband is away. Eldest son keeps me company until 9pm, but at 11.30, I’m squirming in bed, sleepless and watchful. A floorboard creaks. Is someone in the house? That’ll be Freddy Krueger coming to fillet me with his razor gloves! (I’m sixteen again, living out my Nightmares on Elm Street).

In my first year at University, (back row, Pysch 101), Sigmund Freud taught me that my fear of the dark was maternal separation anxiety. (Or more likely, having the wimp gene). But lately, I’ve conducted a straw poll of girlfriends and all but one is still scared of the dark. We’re not frightened of the dark itself, but of the bogeymen who still inhabit our nocturnal minds.

My childish terror of lights-out began when mum and I moved in with my Nan when I was seven. It was my nightly torment to dash from back door to outdoor dunny. The brick thunderbox, roofed with an arch of corrugated iron, sat on a cold slab of concrete. The pedestal was white porcelain, with a chain flusher and a fat wooden seat.

On wintry evenings, I’d stand on the back veranda in my pj’s, hopping from one leg to the other to steel my nerves (and distract my bladder). The umbrella trees that loomed over the fishpond threw witchy fingers of shadow. When the wind gusted, those old crones grabbed at my ankles as I leapt off the veranda and tore across the damp grass. From porch to dunny was fifteen steps – fourteen after a run-up. I slammed the dunny door on the umbrella tree witches, only to have relief turn to shock as warm bum met chilly seat.

It was only ever a one-way terror. The return journey was a doddle as I aimed myself at the lit kitchen.

As a teenager, I was both electrified and petrified by horror movies. The bathtub scene in The Shining rattled me for days. One Friday night when we were 18, my girlfriends egged me into watching the late session of Aliens at Cinema City. I thought two bourbons and cokes would give me the requisite dutch courage. But even Sigourney Weaver couldn’t soothe my jitters. Half way through the movie, unable to bear the suspense, I fled the cinema. Sitting on the foyer steps, I waited for my friends, polishing off my popcorn and admiring the plush blood-red carpet under the reassuring neon brightness.

Thirty years later, I’m still a sissy. I can only watch re-runs of the X Files with all the lights on. Even then, I grip my husband’s hairy left thigh, screw shut my eyes and repeat “Is it over yet?” “Yup,” he says, and I open my eyes to confront the gory climax. “You rotten sod!” I poke him playfully where his tummy spills over his trousers.

My fear of fear is irrational but ingrained. Yesterday, I went out running again before dawn. Stretching my hamstrings on the corner, I looked up the street and saw a big bloke shambling towards me. I stuck close to the picket fences as he came closer. True to form, I ascribed Hannibal Lecter to his motives, Quasimodo to his gait.

‘Morning!’ the man said brightly as he passed. Feeling idiotic for my panic, I told myself to grow up. I watched him as he merged with the dark. And then he stopped. For an instant, I thought I saw him glance at me over his shoulder. I brimmed with fear. What’s he picking up? A big stick? Nah. It’s only his newspaper.

Long Way Down

Long Way Down
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 16, 2014

I have met my nemesis. The staircase in our house is wooden and slippery. The risers are too steep, the treads too short. I have to be sure-footed to negotiate the niggardly winders that concertina around the 90-degree corner. All three kids’ bedrooms are at the top of the stairs. To reach the summit, I step over a succession of soggy towels, dumped school uniforms and lately, a deflating World Cup soccer ball.

Late at night, with husband away on business, I padded upstairs in my woolly socks to check on sleeping children. Alfie the cat was sprawled on middle son’s bed, creating furballs on my best cornflower blue blanket. (I should have known a stray kitten with a Hitler moustache was going to be trouble). I scooped him up and headed downstairs.

Halfway down, Alfie sensed he was about to be imprisoned in a frigid laundry for the night. Squirming to free himself, he leapt out of my arms. My socked right foot slid out from under me. Down I went, smashing the bony cleft between two dainty buttocks on the edge of the step.

A ramrod of pain shot from bum to brain, and I passed out. Seconds later (or was it minutes?) I came to at the foot of the stairs, right arm twisted, left leg splayed at an unflattering angle. I lay frozen in fright, holding my breath, pelvis throbbing. I wasn’t sure if I was rigid from the spasms or from shock.

At last, the pounding subsided to an ache and I hoisted myself off the floor and hobbled into the bathroom. Dithering in front of the mirror, I tested various movements to see which ones hurt the most. I could twist far enough around to examine the lump now gracing my tailbone. A big blue bruise bloomed on my arm. Satisfied I’d escaped breakages, I took two Panadol and hirpled off to bed.

Six fitful hours later, I rolled over and planted my feet on the carpet. I stood up and winced, legs unsteady as my rear began throbbing anew. I rotated in front of the mirror, lifting up my nightie to greet two moons mid-eclipse: my derriere now shadowed by a cauliflower-shaped bruise. For the next week, I watched my technicolour rump turn from mulberry to magenta to un-mellow yellow.

I dreamt about falling. Falling off escalators, falling from great heights, falling into a wheelchair. I woke up one morning realising I am no longer invincible.

In my twenties, I talked glibly about hating my tummy (round), shoulders (broad), my calves (muscly).

Now I don’t care a jot about being short-waisted or flat-footed. It’s my eyes I’m worried about. And my creaky knees and crepey neck. The start of jowls. The liver spots taking up residence on the backs of my hands. Bunions? I think I have a couple. Bunions! I can apply ugly words to most of my deteriorating body.

I used to read books in bed in semi-darkness. Now I can barely read a street sign until I’m parked underneath one. I need a magnifying glass to thread a needle. I’m forever saying, to no-one in particular: “Have you seen my glasses?” I find them on the laundry bench – I must have been folding the washing. On the shampoo shelf in the shower – I forgot I had them on.

For safe-keeping, I clamp my glasses on top of my head, but then they flop onto my nose when I’m vacuuming or unpacking the groceries. I spook myself when the world becomes even blurrier through smudged lenses. I refuse to hang my specs on a chain around my neck, but it’s only a matter of time.

I’m not ready for my body to start clapping out. The hearing in my left ear is sub-normal. Not bad enough for a hearing aid but bad enough for me to repeat ‘Pardon?’ to a teenager who talks with his back turned while Mythbusters is blaring on the telly.

He cheered when I booked in for a hearing test. He was equally sympathetic when I arrived home chastened by my sub-sonic results. “Can you hear me?” he whispered.

“Very funny,” I deadpanned, and pushed a roast dinner towards him. “If you get to 46 and all that’s wrong with you is one deaf ear, you’ll be grateful.”

He mimed a “yada, yada, yada,” then mouthed a silent “Pass the gravy, mother bear!”

I banged my fist on the table, hoping the shock would wipe the grin off his face. It didn’t.

In the end, it took a fortnight for my rump to recover. I’m now ascending and descending the stairs like a crone, gripping the handrail and purposefully guiding my feet. My body may have delivered decades of faithful service but I think my warranty just ran out.

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.

Yesterday’s News

Yesterday’s News
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 2, 2014

The three of us, former work buddies, were ensconced in a Mexican cantina in Northbridge. It was so dark we couldn’t tell our duck tostadas from our chicken tortillas. But no-one cared. We were absorbed in a discussion about generations.

One of my girlfriends, a senior executive, was recounting how a week earlier, she’d called an underling into her office for some constructive criticism, only to have the young woman burst into tears.

We two listeners were taken aback: “She cried in front of everyone?”

“Yep! All the girls in the office were hugging her and I was suddenly the Wicked Witch of the West!”

“I don’t ever remember crying at work,” I announced. “I’ve fled the newsroom and sobbed in the loo. I’ve cried in the car park. But I’ve never let anyone see me upset in the office. I wasn’t into career suicide!”

“That’s the point,” said my other friend. “We were always trying to prove we were just as good as the blokes. We weren’t about to handicap ourselves by crying!”

We decided office protocols must have changed and we’d failed to notice. Maybe we’re entitled to a group hug and a good howl at the coffee station when the boss berates us for missing a deadline? We launched into a muddled debate about whether the coming generation has been over-indulged. We traded stories about our pampered young colleagues, born in the 80s and 90s. Are they more driven, harder working, more ambitious than we were at their age? “Impossible!” one girlfriend said.

At 46, I’m old enough now for the next generation to dismiss me as yesterday’s woman. But from now on, I will co-exist, (uneasily I expect), with those up-and-coming aspirants I never dreamed could one day supplant me.

Sliding towards 50, it’s sobering to realise that more of my life is behind me than in front. I can look back and see the turning points in my life, the happy accidents, the mistakes averted, not because I was smart or prescient, but by dumb luck.

As a skittish Uni student, what if I’d never sat down next to that beautiful woman in the library cafe? She told me her husband was the boss of a radio station. What if she hadn’t urged me to try out for a voice test? Rigid with nerves, I flunked the test with my breathy falsetto. I swallowed my pride and agreed to mind the switchboard instead.

In 1988, when Gen Y’s were playing Donkey Kong on their Game Boys, I was making endless cups of Maxwell House for disc jockeys with voices like velvet. I put my hand up when they needed a barrel girl to draw the weekly winners. I was told to act ditzy. (There was no acting required). I practiced rustling envelopes at home. And then the boss called me into his office again, and I figured my envelope-rustling career was doomed. But instead he said: “The newsroom’s looking for a cadet reporter. Wanna give it a shot?”

Two decades later, I’m sharing my line of work with newcomers who think they know it all. Just like I did once. To me, they’re kids; such eager recruits with their sharp fashion sense and the smarts to match. I admire them: they already know what they want. I was 30 by the time I’d grown their kind of confidence.

Will those Gen Y’s look down on my generation the same way I’ve pigeon-holed my mum and her friends? She still teases me about the day I was cradling my first-born son and I said to her: “I won’t do the wooden spoon or the naughty chair – I’ll just talk it out quietly and calmly with him.” How did she restrain herself from laughing out loud? Instead she replied: “Never say never to the naughty chair! You sure spent enough time on it!”

I wrote last November about how women are tormenting themselves trying to ‘have it all,’ aiming for perfection and arriving at frustration. In response, I received a polite letter from a woman in her seventies, a mother-of-five who’d worked for forty years as a school teacher.

“Do you really think you’re the first women on earth struggling to manage work and children?” she wrote. “For goodness sake, you young ones need to get over yourselves!”

In the Mexican darkness, we middle-aged youngsters hailed a waiter, put generational rivalry aside and spent five minutes trying to divide the bill.

We waved each other goodbye and I walked to my car, wondering how history will paint my generation. As uptight overachievers? Or overworked and underrated? And then I remembered there’s no loo paper at home and we’re out of milk.

A Wing and a Prayer

A Wing and a Prayer
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 26, 2014

It was almost 9am and I’d been on the road for two hours. I’d expected a procession of trucks driving north on the Brand Highway but I hadn’t seen another vehicle in 15 minutes. Had I missed the turn-off to Badgingarra?

I slowed around a sweeping bend and noticed a faded truck, parked on the shoulder of a gravel track. I veered off the highway and crunched to a stop in front of it.

Painted across the bonnet was the slogan: “Alcatraz, the Bird Man.” Up close, the pale morning shadows conspired to suggest the truck was deserted but then a gruff voice came from behind the cabin: “Morning!”

I heard the thud of feet landing on gravel and an older bloke in a black fleecy tracksuit limped into view. He wore white cotton gloves, the palms a grubby grey. A knitted beanie hugged his ears. “Hi there!” I replied, our steamy breath rising in drifts. “Can you tell me if I’ve gone past the road to Badgingarra? I think I’m pretty close.”

“Nah. You’re good. Another ten minutes. You can’t miss it.”

I pulled my coat tighter. “Aren’t you freezing?” I asked, noticing the thongs on the big slabs of his feet.

“This ain’t cold!’ he said, chuckling. “Sun’s up. Balmy!” and he leaned in and slapped the front grille of his truck. His right leg twisted at an odd angle and he winced.

“Pins and needles in your leg?” I asked.

“Nah. Vietnam,” he said matter-of-factly.

I felt a pang of awkwardness but he thrust forward a gloved hand: “Dave. Ugly Dave, they call me!”

We both laughed.

It was then I took in the signage down the side of the truck: The Racing Pigeon Federation of WA Inc.

“I’m about to let ‘em go,” Dave said. “There’s a thousand birds in that truck. Know anything about pigeons?” I shook my head.

“Well, this race is what we call a short sprint. Nine different clubs put birds on my truck this morning. I drive ‘em 200 clicks north, fire ‘em off and they race home.”

He checked his watch – 9.11 – then beckoned.

The truck’s back doors were open facing east. The pale sunlight streamed in, lighting the baskets of pigeons slotted into rows along each side of the gloom. Dave swung himself aboard and hobbled up the centre aisle, systematically flicking the metal pins from the bird boxes.

“This arms ‘em,” he yelled. “In a sec, I’ll flip up these levers, and fire off the first box. I’ll count to five until the birds clear and then I’ll fire off another row. I don’t want no flyover.”

“What’s a flyover?”

“That’s when the top and bottom birds collide. You get busted wings and feathers. I won’t do an illegal start. Some of these pigeons are worth $400 a pop. Best you stand back. I gotta clear this lot at quarter past nine on the knocker.”

I stood against my car, no clue what to expect.

And then a furious drumming filled my ears as the air exploded with birds. For a few moments, the truck blurred behind a thrashing mass of wings. Birds kept pouring out, swarming up and over my head. Seconds later, they’d whirled into a feathery grey cloud above the treetops.

“They’re getting their bearings!” Dave shouted. I watched agape as the clump of birds banked westward and wheeled towards the coast.

“Flying compasses they are!” Dave said, scrabbling down from the truck. “They use the sun, wind, magnetic fields – whatever it takes to get home.”

“Amazing!” I said as we watched the smudge of pigeons disappear.

“Me and my brother had 50 between us as kids,” he said. “We’d sneak around the railway yards at night and scoop ‘em up with a net. Sitting ducks they were – pigeons won’t fly at night! We’d re-set ‘em – keep ‘em in a loft for a month. Then we’d load ‘em in milk crates tied to our bikes and ride ‘em further and further down the road and let ‘em go. They never went anywhere but home.”

Dave retrieved several crumpled photos from his glovebox and passed them to me. “I been a racing pigeon driver for eight years now, ever since I left the army. I get a real rush watching ‘em.”

An abrupt shriek cut the air. Dave scanned the branches of the ghost gums standing sentinel along the track. He pointed out a falcon, its head cocked to one side, inspecting us.

“You’re too late, you dope!” he yelled into the tree. “You’ve missed your breakfast!”

I shook Dave’s hand, climbed back into my still warm car, and headed up the highway.