Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 14, 2015

The train doors hissed apart. My youngsters scampered inside the near empty carriage, debating the merits of north-facing window over south. They scooted towards the driver’s door and clambered onto the bench under the largest expanse of window, a foot apart, each claiming the winning view. Babbling to each another, they pressed their noses to the glass as the train glided out of the station.

Teenage son and I sat down beside them. I assessed the couple opposite – a well-preserved grandma in a floppy felt hat and her pint-sized companion, a boy about the same age as my four-year-old daughter. He was sitting quietly, his thonged feet dangling, head bowed, transfixed by the iPad in his lap. Every few moments, he’d jolt into action, little thumbs swiping frantically at the screen, a chorus of bubbles noises accompanying his efforts.

“Next stop: City West,” sang the lady-spruiker over the intercom. My youngsters parroted her in high-pitched voices. They leapt to their feet for a game of statues. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder like the Queen’s guard, they competed to see who’d falter as the train lurched to a halt beside the platform. As the driver squeezed the brakes, small daughter teetered, then stumbled forward, collapsing on the floor in a fit of giggles.

“I win!” gloated seven-year-old brother as she scrambled to her feet.

“Again!” she squealed, resuming her sentry post as she waited for the driver to accelerate.

That’s when I noticed a flicker of disapproval on the grandmother’s face. Her mouth set into a grim line. I checked myself before smiling at her: “They love that game,” I said, attempting to humour her.

“Pfff,” she harrumphed. “The train’s not a playground.”

“I know. But it’s empty,” I said. “I wouldn’t let them do it if it was full.”

She wasn’t buying my mitigation.

“You young ones,” she said. “You’re the parents who won’t parent!”

It took me a moment to register her back-hander. I scanned her stony face for signs of amusement but saw only contempt. I was saved by the tinny train-voice chiming “Next station: Fremantle.”

My children capered by my side as I gathered our bags. My brain scrambled for a riposte but the woman’s snipe had thrown me. I gave her a conciliatory nod as I stood up, wishing I’d joined the school debating team. For the rest of the morning, I felt rattled. I deconstructed our conversation and questioned my parenting.

Had my children made a nuisance of themselves? Should I have discouraged their playful exuberance? Was train-nanna the more considerate parent for occupying her grandson with an iPad?

The little boy had barely registered the journey, let alone the view. He’d missed the train clacking over Fremantle Bridge; the vertiginous drop to the swirling water below. He hadn’t spotted the two tugboats ploughing in from Gage Roads, nor marvelled at the bulk carrier unloading its cargo of white Hyundais like so many Matchbox cars. His curiosity about the world outside his window had been stifled by the attention-seeking gadget on his lap. The virtual world was his babysitter while real life passed him by.

I, too, have succumbed to the charms of electronic child-minding. Our two-hour trip to the family farm near Collie is now driven in rapt silence. Our three kids are allowed to power up their screens as soon as we hit the freeway. The bickering subsides as we coast over the Narrows Bridge. I swivel to see who in the back seat is silently crying. I’m greeted by my trio in matching pose, heads down, headphones clamped to their ears, thumbs hovering over shiny glass. I no longer bother to point out the Old Mill, the jet-skis foaming up the river, the parasailers tethered to their harlequin canopies.

I miss playing I Spy. I miss the alphabet games that taught my daughter her letters. I miss the collective groan from the back seat when I suggest a round of Who am I? (An hour later, no-one wants our charades to end.)

Lately, I even pine for middle child’s frequent piddle-stops. They gave us an excuse to explore the bush. But bladder breaks are a rarity now there’s computer time on offer. (My lad would delay a wee through an earthquake rather than cut short his weekly ration of a Minecraft game.)

Our drives to the farm, the five of us in forced company, are now sterile. I like my family boisterous, not tranquilized. It’s no fun without smallest child whining “How much longer?” as we pass Jandakot Airport.

The next time we go to the farm, I’m banning the iPads. I’m going to hold court from the front seat and parent the old-fashioned way. We’ll have spelling bees and play Spotto. They’ll hate me for it but I don’t care. That train grandma has done me a favour. I’ve seen the future of parenting and I want my family back.

Bumpy Ride

Bumpy Ride
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 7, 2015

Whatever you think of middle-aged cyclists, I envy them their exhilarated faces. Rarely do I see joggers who inspire me. Middle-aged joggers, with their glazed eyes and their slackened, panting mouths, give me the impression they’re trying to hold back an infarction before breakfast.

Lately, I’ve been wearing the same expression. By the time I jog around the park and head for home, the twinge in my knee has become a roar. My lips are set in a grim line. I lead with my left leg to take the pressure off the right. My face is drippy with sweat and florid with exertion.

My neighbourhood pelotons rocket past me like so many superheroes, still fresh from their 40 km dawn airing. Their costumes are a riot of spandex. Their chests and backs carry exotic names like Birzman and Limar, Zefal and Shimano. They chatter as fast as they ride, laughing and shouting each others’ praises. I gaze admiringly at their hairless calves and the sinewy crush of speed and sweat. I see no stress on these faces, just the joy of self-propelled transport streaming down the road.

I, too, want to wear windswept euphoria on my face. So as the sun cruised over the horizon last Monday morning, I dragged my husband’s bike out from under the ivy festooning the shed. I wiped off a summer’s dust with the tail of my t-shirt. I resuscitated the flaccid tyres and got quite out of breath myself. I tugged at the seat-post clamp until it grudgingly agreed I wasn’t six-foot-four (neither is my husband, but he likes the illusion of tallness). Finally, I waggled the saddle down to five-foot-five and warned the black spider clinging to her web in the front wheel she’d regret her stubbornness.

At 6.22am, I threw my leg over the saddle, settled two dainty buttocks into position and cranked my way up the road. Still cool enough to be pleasantly fresh, the early morning easterly buffeted my face. I pumped my legs and my bike surged forward. I listened to the soothing hum of the wheels. My brain shrugged off the last vestiges of sleepiness, as bike and Wonderwoman found their rhythm. Even my aching knee was pacified into submission by the smooth ride. This was freedom!

For the first ten minutes I coasted behind pedestrians waiting for them to move aside. ‘Ding!’ I chimed them politely with a flick of my rusty bell. Their heads snapped around to clock the approaching danger. I sang a two-toned ‘Thank you!’ as they stepped left and I breezed past.

Confidence soaring, I dipped off a driveway and swept into the cycle lane, dodging the litter of box tree nuts along the kerb. A cyclist whizzed past me in a rush of warm air. So close was he, a bead of his sweat splatted my cheek. My front wheel wobbled in shock.

“Squirrel!” he bellowed at me over his shoulder as he tore away.

“Squirrel?” I called after him nervously, darting around another scattering of tree nuts, but he was long gone. I checked behind me to see no-one else was hiding in my slipstream. I shifted my weight from left cheek to right on a seat that was hardening to concrete.

As I swept around a bend and down a steep hill, a peloton streamed past me, riding two and three abreast. With the wind roaring in my ears, I didn’t hear them coming until they zoomed around me, the cogs of their bike-chains buzzing like a swarm of bees. I pedalled furiously to keep up with them, but within seconds, they were just a blur at the bottom of the hill. Despondent, I gave up the chase.

As I coasted down the slope, still panting from my sprint, an insect travelling uphill veered into my lane and rocketed into my mouth. Hitting the brakes, I spluttered and tried to spit it out. The bug must have sensed the drop in air speed because it made a frantic attempt to escape my mouth-flower. It gave a final feeble buzz as I swallowed him (or her). I was still gagging as I turned for home.

It was on the last straight stretch of road that I saw him. A lone cyclist, up ahead, a wiry-looking bloke in lurid lime and black. As he breezed along a gentle decline, I upshifted into high gear and hammered my legs. Tucking chin to chest, I hunkered down over the handlebars and closed the gap. On his tail, I psyched myself for one last burst of acceleration and slid past him, turning slightly to deliver a nonchalant “Mor-ning!” That’s when I glimpsed his well-worn face and my brain absorbed the words on his vest: 80-plus, riding high.

I have more training to do.

Middle Ground

Middle Ground
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 28, 2015

A hair salon is a dangerous place for an existential crisis. Propped in a padded chair, I wear a black plastic cape like a shroud. A black hand-towel encircles my neck, fastened tightly at my throat with a press-stud. The young hairstylist stands behind me and slops her brush into a puddle of hair dye on her trolley. She carves a centre parting along my scalp then slaps her loaded brush back and forth across my greying head as if she’s painting a picket fence.

At some point, every client at the hairdressers must confront their reflection. And so, reluctantly, I drop my Woman’s Day and examine my mirror image. I’m pinned under a beam of white light from a ceiling as black as my middle-aged despair. (Salon lighting is designed to show off your hair at the expense of your face).

I inspect left and right, but no matter where I look, the maze of mirrors reflects bits of me I don’t want to see. I stare at my profile, wondering why my nose looks bigger than it used to. The back of my head is flatter than I remember. (Note to self: no more ponytails.) I see half-moons of blue shadow under my eyes. I’ve never noticed them before. When did my frown deepen from a crease to a furrow? My neck! Is that my neck? Why is there a pouch under my chin? I lift my chin, clench my jaw and the pouch tightens, then disappears, replaced by a collection of stringy tendons that stretch from jaw to collar bone. I pray to Hebe, Goddess of Youth, to spare me the arrival of those fleshy, drooping jowls.

I have been young all my life until now. Overnight, spots are appearing on the backs of my hands in pretty shades of fawn. My shape is shifting. A belt once emphasised my waist. Now it advertises tummy spillage. I have acquired what my nan used to call an ‘ample bosom.’ I no longer flaunt my knees in short skirts.

If I cover my left eye, the razor-edged fronds on the palm outside the window become a blur. If I cover my left, they turn to green fuzz. But with my glasses on, I can discern a lone ant marching down the spine. I spend more time thinking about the whereabouts of my specs than my children.

Middle age has reminded me I’ve run out of time to become a ballerina or capture a Higgs boson. Those dreams are dead. I failed to tap my potential. Squandering time was my teenaged occupation. In my twenties, life stretched boundlessly before me – there would be time for everything. How is it I have been to the funerals of three close friends my age?

At the Royal Show, I discovered fear has replaced recklessness. With seven-year-old son tugging me towards the rollercoaster, I passed off the knot in my stomach as excitement. I bought two tickets to the Wild Mouse, which seemed far scarier re-named the Python Loop. As the wheels began to rumble, I gave my son a fake grin and for the next two minutes, rode that rollercoaster with my eyes clamped shut in terror. Vertigo suffocated any euphoria. Middle age has taught me my limits.

Over 40s should not heap scorn on the young. It brands us as obsolete. Last week at a dinner, we mums lampooned our offspring’s bad taste in music.

“Have you actually listened to Limp Bizkit?” asked one. “The language is foul!”

We chimed in with our own examples until someone piped up: “Listen to us! We sound like our mothers!”

For a moment, we were dumbstruck.

I thought back to the day my own Mum announced she wouldn’t pay for ballroom dancing lessons just so I could obsess about the boys from the school next door. “You’re too old to understand!” I shouted, and flounced off to my room, satisfied I’d inflicted a punishing blow. She yelled back: “You’re too young to know anything!” Beneath my outrage, I suspected she was right.

Already, I feel my life narrowing. Ten years ago, a Saturday night at home was unthinkable. Now two nights out in a row is the result of poor planning.

No-one in the family wants to see me dance anymore. With Footloose on the telly, I spring out of the sofa. Teenage son mimes a cry for help.

“C’mon honey!” I yell. “I used to be a great dancer!”

“No, you didn’t. I can tell,” comes his withering reply. My hip wiggle peters out. I fear I’m the equivalent of a 50-year-old man growing a ponytail.

Perhaps middle age is the time to reflect – not on the aspirations we failed to realise – but on the bad things that never happened. In the meantime, I won’t be quitting dancing until the music stops.

In the Wings

In the Wings
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 21, 2015

The bird-man entered our lives last Wednesday. He was parked at a small table outside our local growers market. A faded Bintang t-shirt strained against his belly. His right arm, bent at the elbow like a chicken wing, was hooked across the back of his chair. I noticed the stump of his ring finger, missing two knuckles. A long wispy white beard fanned out from his chin and tapered halfway down his chest. His nose was misshapen with a patchwork of scars where I presumed he’d had sun damage carved from the bone. Propped against the wall beside him sat a bag half-filled with empty soft drink cans.

But it was the bird attached to his shoulder that captured our interest. Its parrot-shaped head was electric-yellow, its nape and chest a fiery orange. Tucked against its small body, two long wings were splashed with turquoise. Ruffling its feathers, the bird cocked its head to inspect us and I saw a flash of bright blue tips in its tail.

And then it squawked so loudly I flinched. My youngsters startled – seven-year-old boy clapped his hands to his ears. An elderly lady, stopping to readjust her walking frame, jerked upright, scanning for the source of the noise. Failing to spot the shoulder bird, she refocused on her feet and stepped cautiously away.

My four-year-old tugged my hand and pointed at the bird. ‘Why is it wet?’ she asked me.

“He’s just had a shower,” his owner answered gruffly. My daughter inched closer to my side. The bird-man lifted a four-fingered hand to stroke his feathery epaulette.

“What sort is he?” I asked, intrigued.

“He’s a South American Sun Conure. Endangered, so they say.”

“What’s his name?” blurted my son, emboldened by our conversation.

“Sunny,” said the bird-man. “Suits him, huh?”

My boy nodded, returning a shy smile. The bird-man, encouraged, coaxed Sunny onto his finger.

“Some fella did his dough on this bird,” he continued.

“Paid 600 bucks for him, he did. And then the stupid bloke carked it six weeks later. My sister ended up with his bird. Then she got sick, so now Sunny’s living with me.”

“How old is he?” asked my boy.

“He’s five. But they say he could live to thirty.”

“Nearly as old as Mummy!” I fibbed to my small fry.

The bird-man grunted, amused.

“He’s got a big voice for a small bird!” I said as Sunny blinked at me.

“Part of his charm,” replied the bird-man, before adding quietly, “I’ve seen you before haven’t I?”

“Yeah. This is my local.”

I felt a pang of guilt. I’d failed to acknowledge this familiar stranger until he’d worn a bird.

“I come here most days to sit in the air-con,” he said. “I like watching the shoppers go by.”

He swatted at a fly and Sunny flinched, letting go another ear-grating squawk.

“Most people look straight through me. One time, this fella hands me a $20 note. Jeez! I must’ve looked rough that day! I don’t dress like a millionaire but I own my own flat.”

He chuckled and leaned forward so no passers-by would hear us.

“If people wanna pretend I’m not here, that’s fine by me. But you know what? Sunny’s changed all that. Now everyone wants to talk to me about the darn bird!”

I glanced behind me and saw small daughter had tired of our conversation. She was now helping her toy bunny scale the dividing rail between the checkouts. Her brother was still by my side, mesmerised by Sunny’s riotous plumage. I wondered why I’d never chatted to this old man before. How I could be so indifferent to such an interesting face?

“I ain’t lonely,” he said, reading my mind. “Truck driver I was – Readymix – but I gave it up at 53. They wanted me to do more and more for less and less. Now I collect cans. I walk all over the joint. Been collecting twelve years. The scrap dealer used to give me $1.60 per kilo. Now he’ll only pay 55 cents. But that’s OK. Life’s tough on him too.”

With a note of pride in his voice, he went on: “I’ve donated $7000 to charity from collecting cans. Keeps me going, searching for them.”

We paused, and I realised we’d run out of things to say. I bent down to gather my green bags. “Nice to meet you,” I said, feeling awkward at not knowing his name.

“Herb,” he offered.

We shook hands as my two youngsters bounded ahead and disappeared around the corner.

Moments later, I heard a shout. I looked back to see Herb waving daughter’s forgotten toy bunny above his head.

The kids and I haven’t stopped talking about him since.

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.”

Happy Hours

Happy Hours
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 7, 2015

A new year always brings talk of happiness. We wish it on others, we hope to heap it on ourselves. We fantasise about it, plan for it, burden our credit cards to buy it. We tell ourselves that we deserve it. But how do we measure happiness?

As a child, I remember happiness feeling like my chest was going to burst. An uncle’s gift of a 20-cent piece pressed into my palm made me hyperventilate. I pedalled furiously to the lolly shop, seven-year-old brain frothing with anticipation, my precious coin snug in the pouch of my koala purse.

Smarties were three for a cent, musk sticks and caramel cobbers, two cents each, Gobstoppers, ten cents. Could I, would I, blow 20 cents on two Gobstoppers? I dithered at the lolly counter until Mr Gripps, accustomed to my life-changing deliberations, sighed and hung the white paper bag back on its hook. As he turned to unload a crate of peaches, I leapt to a decision. And then I rode home one-handed, clutching a bag of musk sticks (5) and a single gobstopper in one sweaty palm, wobbling with happiness.

As a teenager, my happiness dipped and soared like my hormones. Some weeks it lasted only as long as my boyfriends. But girlfriends could always bolster my fragile self esteem. At one slumber party, we 16-year-olds stayed up watching Steel Magnolias, stiff-necked in our corduroy beanbags, littering the sleepout with popcorn. We sobbed when Julia Roberts lay lifeless on the porch, howled when they switched off her life support, then fawned over her grieving husband at the funeral.

At midnight, using an ice-cream lid as a Ouija board, we held hands and conducted a séance, feverish with excitement. Happiness was ours when we conjured the ghost of 95-year-old Mrs Werne from three doors down. (She’d died, mysteriously, of old age.)

At 2am, high on Fanta and hysterical when Mrs Werne rustled up a gust that rattled the windows, we mapped out the requirements for our future happiness from the safety of our sleeping bags. Mine was conditional upon marrying Richard Gere, becoming an ABC newsreader with a lifetime pension and giving birth to triplets. (I had the triplets, it turned out, but they took ten years to emerge.)

Unhappiness was Mum arriving at my sleepover house next morning to take me home to my only-child existence, sullen from sleeplessness.

Now, still at the beginner’s end of middle age, I’ve learnt that my happiness depends on relentless participation. I need to be busy and needed and creative. I need daily triumphs. I no longer covet a BMW or a famous husband.

Perhaps happiness is the stringing together of small pleasures. Holding hands with my Collie-bred heartthrob. The sound of my children giggling in another room. Horsing around at the beach. Eating brownies with home-made icecream. A freshly vacuumed floor (do domestic satisfactions count?)

Perhaps happiness is a day of upticks: a sleep-in, a friend’s husband given the all clear after cancer, finding a forgotten block of chocolate behind the cat biscuits. At the salon where I’ve had my hair cut for a decade, the owner, Hans, always greets me by asking “How can I make you happy?” What better way to foster loyalty than by reminding his clients that his happiness depends on theirs?

On a recent drive to the farm, eldest son floated this question: “Mum, if you had to choose, would you rather a broken leg or your dodgy knee?” I chose my dodgy knee. Later, I realised that over a lifetime, my painful knee will deliver far more misery than six weeks on crutches.

My generation has made the pursuit of happiness its crusade. We delude ourselves that contentment is the difference between a weekend at Rottnest and a week at the Shangri-La in the Maldives. Will renovating our melamine kitchen make me happier? It might – for a month. But then I’ll get used to the shiny new cupboards and the self-cleaning oven and turn my discontent to our 80s faux-marble bathroom. (Life-long happiness always lives on the rung above ours.)

Even parading our happiest selves on Facebook is not enough to trump the competition. Someone’s always funnier, prettier, richer, more in love. I’ve weaned myself off Facebook. It makes me feel inadequate for no good reason. Am I happy enough? As happy as everyone else? On Facebook, the opposite of happy is envy. I just want to be content with what is.

In the supermarket last week, some new textas caught my seven year old’s eye. He badgered me up and down three aisles before I snapped:

“For goodness sake, honey, you’ve just had Christmas!”

He looked at me wide-eyed with hurt and said: “That was ages ago.”

Happiness is fleeting even when Santa Claus delivers it.

Switching Off

Switching Off
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 31, 2015

Above the clatter of cups and the clamourous crowd, the girl’s laugh hee-hawed across the cafe. Heads swivelled in her direction. We customers grinned at each other. She was young, sitting with friends, posing for group photos, her phone bobbing on the end of a selfie-stick. After each press of the shutter, she’d retract the stick, examine the photo and bray loudly at the result.

My gentleman neighbour, roused from his newspaper, leaned towards me and raised one grey eyebrow:

“I don’t know what’s funnier,” he said drily, “that crazy laugh, or those stupid selfie-sticks!’

We nodded at each other in smug agreement. Then he flapped his newspaper and I resumed clattering away on my second hand laptop, relieved to be in such sensible company.

I eyed the girl with her selfie-stick. She was now laughing hysterically, her friends crowding round her phone. Her delight was infectious. I felt a small stab of shame. Everyone but me seems to be high on gadgetry, I thought. And here I am, a laggard, scrabbling to keep up with the latest gear. Is it just me who’s struggling to master the devices I already have?

Last week, my Macbook Pro had a seizure, then blacked out on my desk. I palpated every button but no sweet little apple appeared. In my online darkness, there was only gloom: no email, no Google, no Facebook. The earth was flat again.

What if I’d paralysed my laptop with my own ineptitude? Rather than parade my electronic failings before all-knowing husband, I made a dash for the Apple store. The lanky door-geek waved me towards the Genius Bar. Cradling my lifeless laptop to my bosom, I consulted the brainiac behind the counter.

“Hmmm” he said, fingers flying over my grimy keyboard. I cringed as he frowned at the missing Ctrl’ button.

“I’d say your superdrive’s crashed,” he said, flipping my laptop over to inspect the serial code birthmarked to its bottom.

“It looks pretty worn out. We’ll see what we can do.”

I slunk home.

Seeking comfort from teenage son, I told him, “The genius guy called me a late adopter. Or was it a slow adaptor?”

“More like a slow learner,” he hooted, and re-clamped his headphones to his ears.

Here’s my problem: I’m not wired for rapid uptake. I don’t covet an iPhone 6. I still use my phone for making calls. (Please, no more apps!) I’m content to read books made from paper. No-one has convinced me I need a personal GPS. I’ll happily stay lost until I’m found. But I live in fear of being left behind.

Teenage son is a tech-head, his Y chromosome pre-programmed for gadgetry, like my husband’s. I see them hunched together, their rapturous faces reflected in the vast touch-screen monitor in the loungeroom.

“What are you two doing?” I ask.

“Checking out Google Glass.”

“Google Glass?”

They roll their eyes in unison.

“They’re specs with tiny built-in computers. Operated by voice command.”

I wander off to hang out a load of washing, convinced I’ll never catch up. By the time I return, my two smallest children have joined the duo, having already absorbed the basics of electronic miniaturisation.

Why does it take all my nous (and the limits of my patience) to juggle the three remotes needed to download a movie with Apple TV? My phone and tablet hustle me with their endless stream of posts and tags, links and feeds. Staying connected is exhausting. And oddly dissatisfying. I waste valuable time attending to the backlog to clear a path for uninterrupted work. I have become hobbled to my machines.

My teenager’s online social life started with a trickle and is now an electronic flood. Instagram and Facebook have locked onto his likes and dislikes and deluge him with electronic prods and prompts. His phone beeps for him continuously. He has been conditioned like a Pavlovian dog. He’ll interrupt homework, a conversation, even dinner, to check his gadgets. In fits of pique, I’ve silenced his phone in a drawer. Slammed shut his laptop. The virtual world never sleeps, and if I gave him free reign on his screens, neither would he.

The cyber-world is a disconcerting place for the uninitiated. Mum claims to have no need for email or internet. At 78, she still licks stamps, pays bills by cheque, finds an electrician in the Yellow Pages and navigates by UBD. But she’s adept at texting, and will spell out her day’s adventures with an SMS treatise. She’d be horrified to be labelled a Luddite, but claims learning new gizmos is tedious and she has better things to do, like the watering. She’s right about that, at least. I’m sure I had more freedom before computers made my life simpler.

Like the clappers

Like the clappers
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 24, 2015

Rough landings test my nerves. Belted tightly into my window seat, I stared at the wing tip flexing violently. The rain sheeted in grey gusts. My bird’s eye view of the city was a blur. As the cabin jolted and jerked, the young woman next to me clutched our armrest. She caught my eye, searching for reassurance. I returned her a half-hearted smile and stiffened for the landing.

One set of wheels slammed onto the runway, then the other. I gasped as we lurched sideways and the overhead lockers groaned. The engines roared into reverse and the air brakes on the wing bit into the thick air.

Above the dying screech of the engines, I heard the sudden but unmistakeable sound of someone clapping a few rows ahead of me. My neighbour glanced sideways at me and began clapping too. I felt compelled to join her. A moment later, the cabin erupted into brief applause: we passengers united in our appreciation for our pilots’ skill.

It was still raining as I clambered into a cab. En route to the city, transfixed by the rhythmic arc of the windscreen wipers, I thought about clapping. Why do we clap? Why is it so infectious? What if that passenger had decided not to applaud our pilot? Would our landing have been met only with grateful silence?

I decided clapping is a social contagion – the more a crowd begins to clap, the more pressure there is to join in.

I learned about clapping protocols from my grandmother. We had season tickets to the Concert Hall, stalls, row G. Seat 16 belonged to me, aged nine. Nan, in her fox stole and smelling of lavender talc, squeezed her bottom into seat 17. Even better than the plush crimson seats was the packet of Allen’s Fantales that appeared from the depth of Nan’s handbag. As she turned to discuss the programme with the cognoscente in seat 18, I hastily unwrapped three Fantales and crammed them into my mouth.

My euphoria at having achieved this feat undetected was shortlived. Two toffees were a manageable deceit, but three cemented my jaw shut. I could feel my molars straining at the root as I tried to force top and bottom teeth apart. After a minute of lockjaw and unable to contain the toffee dribble, I tapped Nan’s arm in panic. She turned, frowned at my bulging cheeks and my stained dress and passed me her hanky: “Clean yourself up!” The conductor will be out in a minute. You’ll need to clap hard.”

The maestro, in suit and tails, swept onto the stage with his halo of wild hair and took a deep bow. I clapped furiously, but wondered why, seeing he hadn’t performed yet.

I thought those concerts would never end. I got tired of examining the orchestra so I rubber-necked my fellow concert-goers instead, daring them to return my stare.

And then the conductor let his baton rest, and the music stopped. People rustled and coughed. I started to clap but Nan pinned my hands firmly to my lap. “Not now,” she whispered, “it’s the height of rudeness to clap between movements.” Not clapping mid-symphony became my mark of sophistication.

Nearly an hour later, when Mahler was spent and the maestro rejoined us mortals, I was allowed to clap. I made as big a racket as I could, desperate to release the tension from sitting still for so long. My ears rang and my palms stung but I kept clapping, because everyone else was. Who decided when the applause should stop?

Since then, I have discovered several ways to clap: flat-palmed, hands cupped, thumbs locked, two-fingered (for smart-alecs). My favourite is the fingers of my right hand smacking the palm of my left. If I reverse hands, I feel awkward. (A limp clap is as gauche as a flaccid handshake.)

Historians say clapping descended from the Roman legionnaires who banged spears against shields to applaud a commander. Roman audiences added clapping to their repertoire of finger and thumb clicking, toga flapping and handkerchief waving to express degrees of approval. A disappointed crowd would stay conspicuously silent.

Now, I fear clapping has become rote and ritualised, often an expectation rather than a reward. I blame television for manufacturing applause the way it added canned laughter. In the late 50s, the clap-o-meter purported to measure the popularity of quiz-show contestants. It was a sham, given the producers had already pre-selected the winner. Now, floor managers and warm-up guys whip audiences into raining applause onto even mediocre performers. (Everyone else gets a standing ovation.)

I once went to a performance at a school for the hearing impaired where we were taught how to flap our hands above their heads to signal our approval. Clapping soundlessly took a bit of getting used to. But I’ve never forgotten the rapt silence that accompanied a hundred pairs of hands waving their congratulations. The most deserved applause is not always the noisiest.

Greener Pastures

Greener Pastures
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 17, 2015

I’ve never understood the relationship between man and lawn. On any summer’s morning, I can wake to find my live-in greenkeeper out the back, in the smallest of silky pyjama shorts, inspecting his Sir Walter buffalo. Hands on hips, he meanders back and forth tracing grid patterns in his turf, engrossed in the grass at his feet. The swell of his New Year’s tummy throws a soft round shadow on his beloved lawn.

I lean against the kitchen bench and admire his XL silhouette through the glass doors. Something catches his eye. He drops to one knee and prospects in the grass with a stick. I predict a lone dandelion weed, or some marauding clover or – quelle horreur! – a lumbering black beetle.

Watching him worship his lawn, I feel a surge of jealousy. Why is he yet to descend on bended knee before me, the saintly mother of his children? I brush aside my Virgin Queen fantasies as he rises and greets me with a winsome smile. He points triumphantly to the leafy weed he has snuffed from the grass. Such devotion to his turf!

Our lawn spreads from the back veranda like a viridescent carpet. It’s eye-calmingly green but has become inexplicably brindled with two brown patches along the south fence. By day’s end, I’ll find my man crouched beside one circle of yellowed thatch, hose in hand, lovingly coaxing four small green shoots to proliferate.

In summer, the soundtrack to my weekend becomes the absonant roar of his mower. My bloke emerges from the house in a Panama hat and shorts, printed with a vivid pattern of interlocking elephants. The garden shed is emptied of trimmer, edger, whipper snipper, blower and broom. He lines them up along the driveway and stands back to admire his arsenal of gardening tools. (In our house, a chore can be elevated to a hobby if it requires a trip to Bunnings and the purchase of a power tool.)

He flexes his biceps and leans down to grasp the pull cord. With a single powerful jerk, his periwinkle-blue Victa Vantage coughs, then screams to life.

“And that’s how it’s done!” he calls over his shoulder to seven-year-old son. Small boy bolts inside, hands clapped to his ears. As his father marches the mower across the lawn, small daughter pinches her nose, choked by the smell of petrol. I remind myself to appreciate the sight of man and machine in perfect congruence.

The lawns of my childhood were swathes of spongy buffalo needing constant nurturing. In the early mornings, our street thrummed with the tic-tic-tic of sprinklers, calling to each other like birds. I practiced my handstands and cartwheels on the front lawn only to be rewarded with a patchwork of grass cuts that stung like blazes.

In the summer holidays, it was my job to shepherd our Beagle on his morning constitutional. We’d sniff our way around the golf course. Even at 6.30am, I could smell the heat riding in on the easterly. Then the greenkeeper would climb aboard his ride-on mower and saturate the air with the humid sweetness of cut grass. I warily skirted the par four fairway, where the giant sprinklers spun around on their tripod legs, trying to blast me with machine-gun jets of water.

On drowsy February afternoons, our back lawn would be baked crisp. My job was to water the garden with the hose. Cranky and hot, I haphazardly squirted the grass, yanking on the hose and cursing the kinks. More often than not, I heard the sound of the kitchen window being wrenched open and Mum’s voice shouting: “And if you break that hose, young lady, you’ll be watering ‘til April!”

Thirty years later, I live with a man who has joined that great confraternity of lawn devotees. How green is it? How lush is it? How neat and clipped and weed-free is it? These are the questions that try men’s souls.

I asked the local lawn-mower man, Selwyn, about his philosophy of lawns.

“Mowing grass is therapeutic,” he explained. “It’s about power and control: crisp lines, clean edges. A perfect result in a crappy world.”

That made sense. At 78, my mum still cuts her own lawn with a hand mower.

“I do my best thinking when I’m mowing,” Mum says. “In any case, a lawn should reflect nicely on a house.”

Arriving home yesterday, I discovered my lawn-lover face down on the verge. He’d hacked up a square foot of grass and was elbow deep in dirt, swearing over a retic pipe I’d driven over. I sat beside him and gently suggested his lawn fetish was becoming obsessive.

“Honey,” I asked. “What’s that relationship in nature when one organism lives off another?

“You mean marriage?”

“No,” I bristled. “I meant symbiosis. But feel free to sleep out with your lawn tonight.”

The Ant’s Chance

The Ant’s Chance
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday December 13, 2014

My kitchen has become disputed territory. My enemy has drawn its battle lines around the sink. Each morning we meet at dawn, those ants and I. As I pad bleary-eyed towards the kettle, there they are: a black trail advancing upon my benchtop. A swarm of the blighters besieges a lone shortbread crumb.

Two lines of foot soldiers weave unsteadily between the crumb and the window sill, one coming, one going. I note there are twice as many ants as yesterday and feel a surge of annoyance. I watch three scouts march under the coffee machine and emerge next to the toaster, visibly excited by their discovery of a burnt sultana.

I lean over the six-legged troops, flick the kettle on and reach for a teabag. Sensing impending doom, the ants break ranks, abandon their trophies and scatter. I’m barely awake but already I’m plunged into the day’s existential crisis: will I launch a Mortein blitzkrieg or spare my antagonists?

By the time I’ve fetched the milk from the fridge, the ants are in retreat. They take turns slipping into a dark crack in the wall where the splashback meets the benchtop. Within minutes, all but a few stragglers have disappeared. My benchtop will be no Waterloo today.

Don’t get me wrong. I quite like ants. I like stepping over them on the footpath as they make hillocks in the sandy gaps between the slabs. I like the big ones behind glass in museums, pinned to a mounting board. But when I find ants scavenging in my kitchen I dispense death on impulse. Afterwards, I feel a little throb of remorse. Shakespeare said: Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. Do my ants deserve to die?

I know that in my 47 years on the planet, I have killed scads of harmless insects with my big, dumb, blundering existence. I pay no mind to the countless bugs who’ve slammed against my car windscreen, leaving a smear no bigger than a raindrop as their epitaph.

I’ll happily smash a blowfly or flatten a mosquito and enjoy the victory. I’m grateful for every cockroach corpse.

And yet I play favourites. I’m a fan of spiders. Spiders eat flies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The man of the house has talent – he can shuffle a live Huntsman onto a sheet of newspaper and slide him out the back door. Daddy-long-legs, no matter how long-legged, are welcome to hang their webs from our cornices. I could never kill a cute lawn beetle or an orange ladybird in stylish polka dots. My children know to rush a leaf raft to any bee flailing in our pool. But ants? Does an invasion of ants warrant a massacre?

On the morning of the ants’ first insurgency, I found several dozen of them mobbing a spilled sardine-shaped biscuit from the cat’s bowl. I swept them to their deaths with a wet paper towel. The next morning, the tribe had trebled its presence. I sucked every last one up the vacuum cleaner and felt smug. On the third day, I awoke to a plague of them.

I bought Borax, mixed it with sugar and lured the ants to my honey trap. I don’t know whose nest they took that Borax to, but it wasn’t theirs. So I called a truce to our war of attrition and tried diversionary tactics instead.

Mum suggested I sprinkle spent coffee grounds along their trail around the sink. But they forged a new track around the hotplate. I wiped down my kitchen bench with vinegar. They congregated on a wooden spoon. I blocked up all the cracks in the tiles with squirts of talcum powder and for two days, we were ant-free. “They’re back!” shouted my daughter the next morning, and pointed to a black conga line snaking out from under the fridge. By now, even the cat was getting antsy.

Perhaps I should convert to Buddhism and practice non-violence towards all living creatures. I’ll carry a broom with me for sweeping aside even the smallest insects from my path. But do the Buddhists know about Ross River Virus? Have they ever felt the sting of a March fly or been attacked by a wasp?

Last summer, the big Cape Lilac tree in our laneway spawned a poolside infestation of hairy black caterpillars. At first, we let them be. But they reproduced in such plague proportions that the kids and I felt nauseous from the constant squishing underfoot. The council sent in their exterminator and poisoned them. I didn’t feel one pang of guilt.

But I’m feeling sorry for my ants – they work long hours for little reward. I count myself lucky no-one’s looking down on me as insignificant and disposable. I should tolerate these harmless creatures a while longer. It’s Christmas, after all.