Tangled Web

Tangled Web
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 23, 2015

His chair scraped mine. He acknowledged the intrusion with a polite smile and settled at a table for two. We sat at adjacent tables and observed the Saturday pageantry of the Fremantle cappuccino strip.

My neighbour ordered a beer. He shuffled his chair counter-clockwise to capture the last shaft of afternoon sun. His closely-clipped beard shone auburn but was greying around his sideburns.

He seemed fidgety, drumming the footpath with one scuffed boot. He undid the buttons on his polo shirt. Then he quickly fastened them again. A moment later, his hand flew up to his neck to check his collar was sitting obediently flat.

A woman materialised behind us, hovering by his table.

“M—-?” she said hesitantly.

“Yep! You must be S—–?” He lurched to his feet and pecked her awkwardly on the cheek. She was younger, perhaps not yet 40. Her mouth was a bright slash of red lipstick competing for attention with her short dress.

“You look different to your photo,” said the woman, tittering self-consciously. She parked her red handbag and flicked her shoulder-length hair.

“You look better than yours,” he replied, grinning at his own joke.

She faltered.

By the wounded look on her face, I knew he’d grazed her ego. I twigged that this was a first date: a real-life rendezvous after an online flirtation.

“Uh, I mean, you look even better than your photo,” he said, trying to recover.

A pair of Harley-Davidson Softails rumbled past. Our heads swivelled towards the noise.

“Like bikes?” asked the man, edging towards safer territory.

“Yeah, they’re okay,” she replied. “I had a boyfriend once who had a Harley. He was crazy about it. He used to say ‘only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out a car window.’” They both laughed at her ice-breaker.

I feel uncomfortable overhearing their conversation but I’m jammed between occupied tables. My neighbour begins cataloguing his work history as I study a squabble of seagulls on the road. A bus nearly collects a mess of bird on bumper. The gulls dive between oncoming cars, en route to stray chips. Several more, perched on the awning, screech applause for the daredevils.

The man’s companion is bored. She casts around as he elaborates about the rigours of construction work. Perhaps his job leaves him no time for dalliances? I wonder how many of these dates has he been on. Will she give him a second chance? Does he like her?

I speculate about their chances.

My divorced girlfriends say internet dating makes them feel disposable. Cruising for internet love dispenses with the magic. You become an algorithm of desirables: looks, height, weight, education, income. The mechanics of online dating sabotages romance. The internet subverts kismet.

One jaded girlfriend, after a dozen disastrous blind dates, offers her online suitors a forewarning. ‘By the way,’ she writes by way of a post script. “If we meet offline and you look nothing like your online picture, you’re buying me drinks until you do!”

On the upside, she says spurning an unsuitable candidate is surprisingly painless. On her laptop, she can be as kind or as brutal as she likes, knowing he can’t interrupt, argue or grovel. But she says being discarded online is just as torturous as being dumped in person.

“At least he can’t see me crying. I get to preserve my dignity.”

Another girlfriend, newly-divorced, says internet dating is demoralising.

“I’m sure men use it as target practice,” she tells me.

“As soon as they find out I’m a nurse, the innuendo starts. Having two degrees doesn’t save me from the lewd jokes. One bloke wanted to meet up at McDonalds. He thought a nurse wouldn’t mind. If that wasn’t bad enough, he insisted I come in uniform.”

And yet I know several happy couples who found each other online. Maybe finding a mate is more efficient this way? Standing conspicuously alone at the bar of the Sail and Anchor is old hat; best you go online with your preference for a tall, vegan, climate sceptic and filter out the unsuitable riff-raff from the start. Perhaps we should think of online dating as a sophisticated way to address the ancient and fundamental problem of sorting humans into pairs.

I check the blind daters beside me. His pasta has arrived. He eats with gusto. Slurping noisily, he spatters the table with sauce. Clearly unimpressed, she grabs a serviette, dabs at her sleeve and mops the table.

“Excuse me for a minute,” she says, exhaling a thinly-disguised sigh.

“The toilets are over there, aren’t they?”

His phone chirps a little song as she strides away.

He answers, craning around to check she’s out of earshot.

“Not bad,” he confides. “But yesterday’s was better.”

Older and Wiser

Older and Wiser
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 16, 2015

I spot a friend’s elderly father sitting outside the cafe with his coffee. A brisk north-easterly has turned Kirwin Street into a wind tunnel. A gust flaps his newspaper and whips a flurry of dry leaves under his table but he’s unperturbed.  

“Edward!” I say. “It’s freezing out here. Come inside and have your coffee with me.”

He hoists himself up to kiss my cheek. We move inside to a table by the wall. Edward, dapper in a navy sportscoat and crisp shirt, sweeps one hand across his glabrous head, flattening a few token wisps to his pate.

“How are you?” I say. It seems an obvious question to ask an 87-year-old.

“Can’t complain,” he replies. “I can still read the paper without glasses.”

I detect a note of pride.

“But my teeth are wearing out,” he adds. “I’m going to get new dentures and have the teeth of a 20-year-old. That’ll confuse the ladies!”

I ask about his left knee. (Long pestered by arthritis, it was reconstructed last year). He gives it a slap.

“It feels brand new!” he says, then cranes forward as if to tell me a secret.

“You know, I was dying at 71. My aorta was leaking.”

He unfastens the top button of his shirt and gives me a glimpse of the scar he says bisects him from throat to navel.

“They fixed me up with a pacemaker and a new aorta made of Kevlar. Kevlar! Now I’m bulletproof. I could live for a thousand years. The question is: would I want to?”

I wonder what’s coming next.

“At my age, people die. I’ve said goodbye to almost everybody.” He rattles off a catalogue of three dead brothers, long gone friends, neighbours, classmates, colleagues, the dentist.

“People my age are only alive because death’s forgotten to visit.”

“But are you lonely?”

“Of course! No-one wants to be alone. I miss the warmth of another body sleeping next to mine. But my life is never dull or empty. The good thing about getting old is there’s finally time for thinking. I like to speculate on the nature of human beings. In the mornings, I lie snug in my bed for a long time.” He chuckles. “Because I can!”

“Would you like to meet someone?”

“Where would I find another Barbara?” he ponders aloud. “I was so desperately in love with Barbara.”

His voice trails off and I study my coffee foam to give him a moment to collect himself.

“She was a helluva catch. I was eight years older. She died of lung cancer at 65. She was just a kid, for goodness sake!” I hear the bitterness in his voice, but then he softens.

“That’s the unfairness of life, isn’t it? I’ve never recovered from Barbara’s death. I’m not sure I want to.”

I stay silent.

“A man is only the reflection of the woman he lives with,” he says with a smile. “She completed me. We were married for 45 years. She’s been gone twelve years. It feels like an eternity.”

He brightens.

“But a large family is a good shock-absorber: five children, eight grand-children, four great-grand-children. When I’m with them, life’s fantastic.”

I tell him about my middle son’s upcoming birthday and ask: “How do you think of the future?”

“I make plans. I want to putter down the canals of France in a houseboat; go places I’ve never been. In January I cruised from Sydney to Fiji. There were 2000 passengers. I went to a singles night but only four people turned up. And two of them had partners.”

We snort in unison.

“You know, time goes faster as you get older. But it’s not time that’s going faster – it’s me going slower. Old age is what happens as you wear out. Like the soles of your shoes – week by week, slowly, imperceptibly, and then one day they’re just too worn out to put on. They’ve outlived their purpose.” He quotes a Jaques’ line from As You Like It:

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

He inspects the mottled skin on his still manly hands. “I’m doing okay, compared to some. I’m gobsmacked by my own good luck. How have I managed to get this far in such good nick? My memory’s the problem now. I can feel the fine details fading out. I see people I’ve known for 40 years and I can’t remember their names.”

It’s time to go. I feel buoyant after my half hour with this insightful, perpetually youthful old man. He stands up to say goodbye. “Luck is everything,” he reminds me.

I sit in the car and reflect, wondering if he’s right.

Going Up

Going Up
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 9, 2015

The traffic lights at Labouchere Road flipped to orange and I slammed on the anchors. The car in front sped across the intersection. In the distance I could see cars choking the freeway on-ramp.

“This could take a while,” I said to my three noise-makers in the back, but they were busy singing out of tune to the radio.

Up ahead, I spotted the block of flats I lived in as a four-year-old. I flipped up my sunvisor and counted up four floors to single out the two bedroom apartment Mum rented us after her divorce.

Time had forgotten the five-storey brick box at No. 89 Mill Point Road. All around it, towers of penthouse apartments were drinking in river views. Our 1960s apartment block squatted on the corner, a dumpy brown eyesore.

I studied our fourth floor balcony – a square envelope of concrete jutting out from an expanse of peanut-coloured wall. I could still make out the mulberry-coloured arches painted on the walls at ground level, a clumsy trompe l’oeil stained by the sprinklers with bore water. The umbrella tree in the carpark had grown ten-fold, its flower spikes still catalogued in my mind as giant pink starfish.

Staring at that old building, I was swept away by a flush of early memories. My brain delivered up a snapshot of our flat’s doorbell. It sat just shy of a four-year-old’s straining fingertips, a tantalising square of shiny silver mounted to a green door. I could replay the strangled ‘ding-dong’ of its tuneless chime. I mentally re-traced the swirls in the green carpet on our landing. My mind summonsed the enormous fire hydrant bracketed to the wall beside the lift.

The lift!

I suddenly remembered the lift; could feel again my excitement at being allowed to press the button to summons a ride. The lift announced its arrival with a ‘ping!’ The metal door jolted sideways, vanishing into the wall to reveal a tiny Aladdin’s cave.

Our elevator liked to land where it pleased, forcing me to hop up or jump down to board. I could still recall the tummy butterflies as I contemplated stepping over the two-inch gap between lift and landing. One stumble and I thought I’d fall through the crack and plummet to the lobby. Small girl would be squashed flat by a 2000-pound box. (My brain, enjoying this game, served up a grotesque tableau vivant of the rat Mum once steamrolled with our car.)

Our lift was designed to carry eight people but could only comfortably transport one. It became cramped and awkward with two passengers; incommodious with three. Adult options were limited: stand side by side, shoulders rubbing, or one behind the other, heel to toe. I jammed myself next to the control panel, securing the coveted job of button-pusher.

I tried to identify the smells of the various residents spoiling my ride. Perfumes were stiflingly pungent or sickeningly sweet. Other peoples’ clothing smelt fusty or dank, or reeked of sweat or B.O. Sometimes, Mum got out one floor early and took the stairs.

Later, having conquered my lift-paranoia, I appointed myself elevator-astronaut. Over and over I drove that lift-rocket, cruising down to the lobby then blasting off for Flat 12 on the fourth floor. It mattered not that it was quicker to walk up the stairwell, because I was the pilot in charge of five buttons. (Truthfully, it was only four, because the fifth button was still out of reach.)

Back on Labouchere Road, the traffic lights turned green and my consciousness rejoined the present. As we inched towards the freeway, I wondered if other peoples’ first memories are as equally pedestrian as mine?

The following day, I prodded a girlfriend to tell me her first memory. In vivid detail, she described for me a vignette from her childhood growing up in the Wheatbelt. She remembered being clad in a nappy playing with a toy washing machine on the lid of their septic tank. Her overwhelming feeling, she said, was of the warm sun radiating off the tank, and being absorbed in her domestic idyll, washing her doll’s clothes.

The pair of us were certain our first memories were real, not imagined or distorted by time.

So the next morning, I drove back to my old block of flats in South Perth. A friendly painter allowed me into the building. Climbing the stairs to the fourth floor, I discovered Apartment 12 still had its square doorbell. Bolted to the wall was the very same fire hydrant, (though smaller than I remembered) and the still swirling green carpet.

But unlike me, my beloved lift-rocket had not grown up or moved out. It still had its metal door and faux-timber panelling. Aged 47, I rode that lift up and down – twice – just for kicks, and revisited the favourite scenes from my life, aged four. My job now is not to forget them.

Not Just a Number

Not Just a Number
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 2, 2015

The train doors hissed open. I stepped aboard and sat on an empty bench as we glided out of the station.

Opposite me, a decrepit old fellow was sprawled on the carriage floor, sorting his stash of grimy shopping bags. A long bulbous nose gave him an air of Jimmy Durante, minus the felt homburg. His long beard was a tangle of white wisps. A red-checked parka and black tracksuit pants, the knees peppered with holes, did little to pad his raw-boned frame. The soles of his black sneakers had worn down to reveal threadbare socks and a glimpse of grubby feet. He gave me a sly glance with one bloodshot eye.

With arthritic fingers, he peeled open a plastic pocket and slid a collection of small sugar packets into one hand. I watched, fascinated, as he laid them end-to-end, domino style. With a grunt, he swept up the sugar packets and lined them up like soldiers instead. Satisfied, he reached for another plastic sleeve.

A dozen fag-ends dropped onto the carriage floor. He examined each for drag-worthiness before placing them in rows, biggest to smallest. I noticed his hoard also contained one green lemon and a collection of worn elastic bands, neatly parcelled in rings.

The intercom announced my station. I stood up. “Bye,” I said as an afterthought, but his head remained bowed. I wondered where he was going.

At dawn the next morning, I set off on my bike ride. The low-slung clouds threatened rain. On a whim, I abandoned my usual river route for the bike path that hugs the far side of the railway line. At the level crossing, I waited as the express thundered past in a silver blur. Clattering over the tracks, I swung into the cycle lane, almost colliding with a mound of dark blanket and a pile of shopping bags. It was the homeless man from yesterday. I couldn’t believe it!

He was stretched across the path, propped on one elbow, classifying another collection of sugar packets.

“You’re going to get run over” I said gently. He strained to move into a sitting position. “That’s better” I said, as he slumped against the railway fence, clearing the bike path. He drew his various gubbins towards him and resumed grading his sugar straws. I didn’t know what to say.

“Thank you,” I murmured as I pedalled away. He stayed in my thoughts the whole ride.

Later that morning, two suburbs from mine, I rounded a corner to go to the post office. There he was again, sunning himself on a bench, still cataloguing his detritus.

“Hello,” I said. “That’s three times I’ve seen you since yesterday!”

His head jerked upwards. He eyeballed me but said nothing.

“Is it nice in the sun?” I said, faltering.

He murmured something I couldn’t hear.

“I’m going to the shops,” I said, pointing across the road. “Can I get you anything?”

“Apples,” he muttered.

“Apples? Okay. Back in ten minutes. Will you be here?”

He gave me an affirmative noise.

As I trundled my trolley up the aisles, I decided our third meeting was a coincidence too remarkable to dismiss. Had this homeless man entered my life for a reason? I felt intrigued, then rattled. Were our lives somehow fated to intertwine? What was I supposed to do for him?

The pragmatic quarter of my brain intervened. Coincidences are inevitable, I reminded myself. Why invent a reason to make these chance meetings meaningful? We had merely stumbled across each other by a quirk of timing.

I remembered back in 2001, being completely absorbed in one of the conspiracy theories after 9/11. The date had become noteworthy because 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equalled 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers. There were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 was the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4). There were 11 letters each in ‘Afghanistan,’ ‘New York City’ and ‘the Pentagon.’ The World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11.

Everyone I told about this pattern marvelled at the parallels. Later, I read that the number 11 sequence wasn’t actually an existing pattern. It was merely a pattern that conspiracy theorists had found. I chastised myself for being so gullible. And yet here I was again, trying to force significance upon three random encounters with a stranger.

I gathered my shopping and walked out of the supermarket, a bag of red apples in my free hand. The bench was empty. I scanned the street but there was no old man with wavy white hair and tartan-parka. I parked myself on the bench and waited for several minutes, perplexed. But he had gone. Why had we met? Luck of the draw, I guess.

Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 25, 2015

Fear pricked the soles of my feet. The Griffin road bridge over the Collie River was so high I could feel the adrenalin flooding my gut. My legs felt wobbly. I tried to ignore the pounding in my ears. My brain scrambled to process three converging phobias: my fear of heights, fear of falling and fear of drowning.

Five metres beneath me, the dark water swirled in murky green currents. I perched on the rusty water pipe slung beneath the bridge, my left hand a row of white-knuckles gripping the guard rail behind me. Could I jump?

“C’mon Mum” shouted a voice from the pebbly beach.

Minutes before, I’d been comfortably grounded on the river bank. I waded out to waist-height, shrieking and flapping my arms as the bracing water lapped at my ribs. Adjusting to the chill, I floated on my back, admiring the stands of towering jarrah. Young flooded gums competed for water views amongst the melaleucas and banksias.

I rolled over and studied the sun-bleached timber legs of the bridge, trying to guess their age. Thick metal skirts reinforced the ankles of the poorer specimens, but couldn’t hide the dark veins and unsightly splits further up.

Some larrikin had gouged his nickname into a strut. ‘Mongrel 2015’ it read. Got that right!

I turned to see eldest son scrambling up the embankment on the heels of his uncle. At highway’s edge, they scanned for cars before scuttling out along the bridge, hugging the dirt strip beside the guard rail.

I watched as my 14-year-old man-child folded his giraffe legs and squeezed through the gap in the steel barrier. Then he dropped confidently onto the giant pipe suspended from the girders.

Counting to three, the pair of them leapt from the bridge. I checked my son’s face for terror but found only exhilaration. Legs flailing, they plunged into the deep water. I held my breath waiting for them to surface. Their heads emerged in a raft of bubbles and they lay on their backs, hooting and punching the air.

In that moment, I decided I too, needed to jump off the Griffin bridge. I wanted to test my mettle, impress my offspring, liberate my inner daredevil. Mother-of-three would be hailed as fearless.

I peeled off the T-shirt and skirt covering my bathers and left them, neatly folded, in a pile by the roadside. I tweaked my bather top for maximum coverage, then ducked under the railing and gingerly placed one foot on a girder, the other on the water pipe.

And then I looked down and felt faint. The river below was as black as a crocodile’s gullet. To my addled brain, I could have been peering over a four-storey balcony, without the balcony. Up river, my seven-year-old paddling his plastic canoe looked like a gumnut baby on a leaf.

Imagined catastrophes played out in slow motion. I stood rooted to the pipe and contemplated death by idiocy. A belly flop would be an embarrassing exit but would amuse the congregation at my funeral. Strangulation by river weed? Being eaten alive by marron? My remains would never be found. (The West would callously bestow my page on another hack writer. I mentally wrote the headline: Columnist’s demise is water under bridge.)

My ego regained control. No way would I be branded a chicken! I steeled myself to jump but a flicker of movement caught my eye. I swivelled head on rigid body. A beefy bloke with a Rasputin beard was swinging one hairy thigh over the guard rail. He settled with a thump beside me.

“Got the willies eh” he said. I noted he had a piece of BluTack wedged into his ear.

And then he was gone. Half-way down he hugged one knee and performed a layback bombie that sounded like a depth charge. He surfaced, loosened some pond scum from his beard and sliced through the water with six freestyle arms. He beached, waded ashore and lumbered back into his tent.

Rasputin was just the model I needed. I sucked in a lungful of air, stifled the voices in my head and released my grip on the guard rail. For several moments I teetered on the pipe. The safety barrier was now beyond my reach. The only way out now was down. I stepped off the pipe. As I hurtled toward the blackness, there was no time to contemplate a graceful entry. I smacked the water and disappeared as most of the Collie River went up my nose. Spluttering and snorting, I bobbed to the surface to a welcome of cheering and clapping. I checked myself: nothing broken, septum intact, ego at capacity.

“Nice one Mum,” shouted teenage son. “Bet you can’t do it twice!”

Battle Lines

Battle Lines
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 18, 2015

I am no longer the coolly self-possessed mistress of my kitchen. The ants I tried to befriend at Christmas have become zealots. I practice my domestic sciences in an atmosphere of fear and ambuscades. A bagel crumb left languishing beside the toaster becomes besieged within hours. With military precision, the ants blockade the west bank of my benchtop. Each day they emerge from a different crack. Despite my obsessive cleaning, I am under renewed siege.

At 6am, newly awake, I steel myself for what awaits me in the kitchen. I pad noiselessly across the cork floor and cast a bleary eye towards the sink. No ants. A small thud of relief. I reach for a teabag from Mr Twining. The red box remains pleasingly inviolate. I wait for the kettle to regain consciousness while I split a Hot Cross Bun and jam the halves into the toaster. I reach for the butter cloche and lift the lid.

It’s an ambush! My butter is a black and seething mass. Now I notice ants are pouring from a crack in the wall. They charge down the splashback and into the dish. I am suddenly alert and incensed. Sensing my presence (and recognising the Domestic Tyrant looming murderously over them), the ants race in all directions.

I snatch up the yellow slab with one hand, flick the hot tap and douse the butter. The black army’s front line charges up my arm. A suicide squad leaps into the oily whirlpool below. I hold the butter under the hot water trying not to flinch. A dozen ants try to hide in the nook of my elbow but I brush them to their deaths in the swirling sink. The pluckier ones take refuge on the underside of the butter pat but their footholds dissolve and they plummet to the plughole.

My hand is a greasy scald and three dollars worth of Watsonia has melted down the sink but I don’t care. With a wet paper towel, I mop up the stragglers. All but a thin black trail has now vanished into a pin-hole in the splashback. I march to the bathroom and grab the baby powder. Raining talc upon their blue-tiled bunker, I watch the rearguard flounder in white snow. (There will be but one queen today).

It’s a hollow victory. I awake next morning to find my entire kitchen is occupied territory. The ants have brought in fresh battalions. My sink is crawling with enemy formations. Two black columns, one advancing, one withdrawing, run the length my benchtop. This morning’s ants march over yesterday’s fallen comrades. The Axis of Evil extends to the dishwasher. I am newly enraged.

I cannot plan my retribution without a cup of tea. I flip open the Twinings box. Ants swarm out from under the tea bags. I feel queasy at the sight of so many crawling creatures. Panicking, I seize the box and bolt outside, flinging the anty tea bags onto the grass.

Hatred boils inside my brain. Yet again, I will waste an hour swiping and sterilising the kitchen. Walking inside with one salvaged teabag, I catch teenage son carving up a loaf of bread on the bench. “Use a board!” I shriek. “There can be no crumbs! The ants! No crumbs!”

“Calm your farm,” he says. With a sweep of his hand, he rains breadcrumbs onto the floor.

“Arrgh” I wail. “Clean it up! The ants! They’re taking over.”

Sleepy husband wanders into the kitchen. He squints and adjusts the crotch of his plaid pyjama trousers like a modern-day George Roper to my Mildred.

“What’s all the fuss?”

Teenage son smirks: “Mum thinks the ants are winning.”

“Hasn’t she heard of bug spray?” laughs my husband, as though I’m invisible.

“Yes, I have,” I interject. “But I’m not using spray in the kitchen. Unless you want me to poison your breakfast?”

Husband shrugs and slots a coffee pod into the machine. He leans against the bench while it gurgles to life. I admire his tartan panache as he absentmindedly squashes an ant with the whorl of his fingerprint.

Watching the ant-slayer, I feel suddenly protective of my tiny foe. We’ve been through much together, those ants and I. Over and over, we hear the same tiresome mantra from our nests: “What’s for dinner?” Perhaps we should share the spoils of my kitchen, crumb by crumb?

Next morning, my magnolias are drinking a soft rain. I wander into the kitchen and wake the kettle. I note the sink is still pristine; the benchtop a pure slab of white. I lift up the toaster, check behind the butter dish, peer into the tea box. Not a single ant. Not the next morning, either. A week later we remain ant free. I never dreamt I’d say this, but I kinda miss them.

Cuts Both Ways

Cuts Both Ways
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 11, 2015

I glide around the shop display, high on the heady scent of perfumed candles.

“Would you like to sample our skin creams?” purrs the willowy shopgirl. She hands me a luxury Popsicle stick. With it, I scoop out a polite portion of Kashmir Petal lotion and knead my hands until I smell like a marshmallow. I admire her little amber pots arranged in careful rows along the counter and marvel at her equally decadent prices.

Into the shop walks a woman my age with a familiar face. I can’t place her but I know we’re acquainted somehow. Perhaps we have friends in common? I acknowledge her with a smile and say ‘Hi!’.

She glances towards me and for a micro-second, our eyes lock. I see a flicker of recognition before she hesitates. My greeting hangs uncomfortably in the air. I search her face for friendliness but she gives me a look of Easter Island disdain. I register her unsmiling mouth and realise she has cut me dead. She turns her head to avert my gaze and lavishes her attention on a glass cabinet full of trinkets.

I am flummoxed, then embarrassed. What to do? The slender sales assistant eyes me, waiting for Act II of this shop-staged melodrama. I busy myself with a pot of Magnolia body crème while my mind ratchets through my options. Perhaps she didn’t hear me? Do I say hello again? Maybe she didn’t recognise me? Maybe she decided not to recognise me? Perhaps she’s shy? Is shyness an excuse for rudeness?

Up surges a flood of teenaged insecurities. Perhaps she just doesn’t like me? Why doesn’t she like me?

I berate myself for caring and become incensed instead. How dare she! Is it so hard to be friendly and say hello? My Freudian brain scrambles to rationalise id from ego. I decide to give my nemesis the benefit of the doubt. I sense she’s as aware of my presence as I am of hers. I throw a final glance in her direction and resolve to greet her again if she meets my gaze. Her eyes dart from mine and she feigns sudden interest in a box of greeting cards on the counter. The irony is not lost on me. I cut my losses, nod my thanks to the shopgirl and slip out of the store.

A fortnight later, even as I write, I’m reliving my indignation. Why is snobbery so infuriating?

I’ve only been labelled a snob once (at least to my face). At a bar in Sydney, a bloke in a suit who’d had tee many martoonis suggested I join his table for one. I pointed out my table of ten noise-makers and told him I belonged there. He crooked his index finger at the barman, who leaned in to hear his order: “You call this happy hour?” said martini-man loudly, then pointed at me. “This one’s a snob.”

A dozen heads swivelled on necks. I was mortified. Martini-man, well-pleased with himself, slid off his stool and zig-zagged back to his table. I slunk back to mine.

At high school, I watched the social climbers with awe and envy. One in particular fascinated me. She was the 16-year-old protégé of an upwardly mobile mother, a woman who parked her Mercedes conspicuously outside the principal’s office. I got the feeling we could be friends until a more suitable friend became available. (Nobodies and Somebodies couldn’t be pals.)

I learnt from her that snobs-in-training can’t be complacent – there is always someone higher up the ladder to impress. And this girl was never satisfied. Social climbing was relentless. There were always more and more people to look down on.

By the time we’d left school, she’d run out of friends. Her ritual sneering reinforced her hypocrisy. I was good enough to talk to if nobody better was around. (Her admiration for those above her was far greater than her contempt for the likes of me below.) Years later, we bumped into each other at a fete. Our talk turned to school and her embarrassment at having a mum who aspired to be Queen Bee of the Mother’s Auxiliary. “I didn’t enjoy school much,” she said. “I never felt like I belonged.” I realised then that despite all her social manoeuvring, her schoolyard snobbery was deep-rooted in insecurity.

As for my priggish acquaintance from the gift shop, I’m sure to bump into her again. But this time, I’ll be ready. I’ll bear down on her with my arms stretched wide. I’ll shout excitedly, “Hellooo darling!” Cupping her face with my palms, I’ll plant noisy European kisses on her cheeks. “Where have you been?” I’ll gush and hold her at arm’s length admiringly. I can’t wait to see the look on her face. Snob value!

A Line to the Past

A Line to the Past
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday April 4, 2015

Kulin seems deserted this Sunday morning. The town’s womenfolk are sleeping-in after last night’s dinner dance. The kids on bikes yesterday must be watching TV. Two brown honeyeaters pirouette noisily overhead. They bank sharply before alighting unsteadily on a power line. Theirs is the only movement on Stewart Street.

My newly five-year-old daughter, keen to explore, kicks up a shower of red pebbles from the gravel footpath. We wander past a derelict shop. In the window is a faded sepia photograph of a swarthy bloke wearing a mug-shot smirk. His white shirt-sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, business-like. My pint-sized companion is captivated by his eyebrows, which sit on his jutting forehead like two hairy caterpillars. I read the caption:

Norm Tyley – the Red-Faced Crooked Butcher.

We turn the corner but the Woolshed Cafe is still shut – no caffeine heart-starter for me. We double-back along Day Street. That’s when I spot a long-forgotten friend. Its concrete roots are planted at the centre of a barren backyard. A galvanised trunk is poker-straight. From its branches, half a dozen frayed and flapping towels strain against their pegs.

This is the Hills Hoist of my childhood. There’s the winder with the black plastic knob. The four canopy arms are the same dull grey as the clouds scudding across the Wheatbelt sky. I can see, across the fences, that almost every backyard has a Hills Hoist. Some are bare skeletons; some are pinned with full loads, newly damp with autumn dew.

“What’s that?” asks my youngster, pointing to the steel tree I’d stopped to admire.

“That, honey, is a Hills Hoist!”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a clothes line.”

Showing no interest in either clothes or line, she resumes scuffing pebbles with the now dusty red toe of her sneaker.

But I’m transported back to my childhood, growing up at Nan’s house, the only child of a working mother. Nan’s Hills Hoist had been planted into a carpet of matted buffalo. It stood sentinel between her outside washhouse and the magnolia tree that overlooked Mrs Anderson’s yard at No. 47.

Mrs Anderson’s Hills Hoist was a newer model and came with a trolley on wheels – Nan called it a jinka – that cradled her washing basket. On the east side at No. 43, the Fry family’s Hills Hoist had been planted so close to their sleepout that every time Mrs Fry swung it round to reach a new piece of line, its metal elbow scraped her guttering.

On slow Sunday afternoons, Mr Fry sat in his easy chair on his concrete patio, using the shade from his wife’s wet sheets to read his paper. Every half hour, the sun would find a gap to blind him, or the wind would conspire to rotate the Hills Hoist five degrees. Mr Fry would haul himself out of his chair, shuffle a few inches to the left, then settle himself down again in the shade of a flapping Bonds singlet, or his wife’s underpants. Mesmerised by the size of Lil Fry’s bloomers, I stickybeaked over the picket fence, watching each cotton leg billowing and deflating like an airport windsock.

Aged seven, my job was to lug Saturday morning’s wet washing to the Hills Hoist and hang it out. Mum would crank the handle until the lines dropped within reach, then I’d wipe them with a damp cloth. She’d unhook the wicker basket of wooden pegs and hang the holder at waist-height from the winder instead.

By the time I was ten, plastic pegs had arrived in a riot of colours. I amused myself by matching peg colour to sock colour. On bumper wash days, I created complementary colour arrangements for Mum’s secretarial wardrobe. A modern-day Van Gogh, I paired yellow pegs to Mum’s violet shirt, blue ones to her tangerine trousers. But I came unstuck if her pale-green tennis top was in the wash, seeing pegs never came in magenta.

Nan said to peg whites with whites, and to hang sheets and towels on the outside rungs, so visitors wouldn’t see our unmentionables. If she dashed to the shops, I used the Hills Hoist like a merry-go-round. Every kid did. Ours creaked and groaned and shuddered violently even under my flyweight. A garden tap staked in the lawn obstructed my flight path. I had to remember to jerk my legs up and over the tap, or it would smash into my knees. More than once the tap won, and Nan would arrive home to find me limping across the lawn. She never said anything. The deep blue bruises were enough punishment.

Back on Kulin’s Day Street, small daughter interrupts my reverie shouting: “Mum! There’s a kookaburra o n the Hills Hoist!” For several moments, I drink in the sight of bird on wire. I wonder how many more totems of my childhood are almost obsolete.

Above Bored

Above Bored
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 28, 2015

The ticketing machine coughed and spat a small paper chit into my hand. A64 it read. I surveyed the crowded foyer. A dozen bodies already occupied the grid of public seating.

I sighed, knowing the next half hour of my life would be confined here, waiting to renew my car registration. A woman’s sultry voice spoke through the intercom: “Ticket A51 to Counter three” I silently cursed her for making the Department of Transport sound seductive.

I sat down next to a well-upholstered woman playing Solitaire on her mobile, wishing I hadn’t left my smartphone in the glove box. Closing my eyes, I tuned into the drowsy hum of office machinery. A ceiling fan pattered lazily overhead. Even now and then, the rustling of documents was punctuated by the ka-chunk of a stapler. Sexy intercom-woman called her next customer: “Ticket A52 to Counter one.” I hadn’t been this bored in ages.

As a kid, boredom was my only-child milieu. With a single mum forced to work full-time, my routine was routine. After school, I amused myself by riding my bike on a continuous circuit of the block, accompanied by the tic-a-tic-a-tic of the bright plastic beads that slid up and down my spokes. The faster I pedalled, the noisier my wheels became. Dogs barked as I flew down the hill. I prayed Mrs Gillett’s terrier wouldn’t attack me just because biting was fun.

My job before bed was to climb behind our Thorn television and keep wiggling the rabbit ears until my Nan announced the picture had stopped rolling. She could then watch the rest of Bellbird uninterrupted.

Crouched amongst the cables, each hand gripping an antenna, I couldn’t see the screen. My view was of a blank wall, a standard lamp, and Nan in her Merry Widow armchair, a dinner tray on her lap.

I marked time by studying the two halves of Nan’s face: one side in shadow, the other aglow. When my eyes grew weary of inspections, I opened my ears and silently mimicked the tick-tock of the mantel clock shaped like Napoleon’s hat. Boredom was mine for the next ten minutes.

Saturday mornings stretched languorously before me as I sunned myself on the concrete steps outside Nan’s washhouse, stroking our cat Percy into slumber. That’s when I tugged my doll’s bonnet over his ears. As he jolted awake I fastened the strings under his chin. Then I bundled him into a cardboard box, shut the flaps and whisked Percy away to my room. The carton became a makeshift theatre, Percy exited stage left, a runaway thespian. I was a box office flop.

Boredom reached new lows in Year 10 chemistry. Our teacher, Mr Holden, was florid and nervy and wore squishy shoes. Our windowless chemistry lab had four rows of concrete workbenches. The humid air and the hiss of the Bunsen burners made me sleepy. Reciting the periodic table dulled my brain. I got my halogens and my noble gases confused. I would have dozed off were it not for Mr Holden’s nipples.

They were like nipples I’d never seen. Actually, they were the only men’s nipples I’d ever seen. Large and fleshy, they sat like two discs of polony under his shirt. I couldn’t decide if they were particularly pink or peculiarly protuberant. Or perhaps they showed through his pale shirts because the fabric was transparent from frequent laundering. Either way, my classmates Anita and Sue were equally mesmerized. Flustered by our giggles, Mr Holden’s face would creep crimson and he’d begin to stammer. His nipples became the two least boring elements in chemistry.

Lately I worry I’m not getting enough boredom. Watching taped episodes of Downton Abbey, I fast-forward the commercials. At the checkout I reply to emails on my phone or fire off a handful of texts. I can squeeze efficiency into every spare minute. With a stimulating gadget at arm’s length, I’ve almost eliminated boredom from my life.

And yet I’m beginning to miss the soothing emptiness of wasted time. Perhaps that’s it! Boredom represents the luxury of having nothing pressing to do; when time slumps to its slowest ebb.

On stage at a recent writer’s event, I noticed three silvery-haired women in the audience, front row. They were sitting together, smiling and nodding at me, handbags on laps. Halfway through my lovingly-crafted speech, I glanced at them again. The middle one had dozed off, chin to chest. Her companions’ heads were drooping and jerking, eyelids fluttering a useless fight against sleep. I gulped. Had my talk caressed them into a nap? I delivered a witty punchline and watched the trio startle as people began to clap.

“Most entertaining!” said the middle lady to me as we mingled afterwards.

“So glad you enjoyed it,” I said. “I was worried I might’ve been boring. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Verge of Excess

Verge of Excess
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 21, 2015

I can feel summer losing its sting. The leaves on the plane trees are curling into autumn, their edges fringed a coppery brown. At 6am, there is dew cooling my bike seat. Best of all, the new season triggers our council’s bulk rubbish collection.

Mounds of gubbins have arisen on verges. Outside No. 56, a black Weber kettle from last century is crippled on the grass. Now a lidless bipod, its rusty innards are exposed. A clothes horse, plastic arms peeling, leans against a tree. Teetering on the kerb outside No. 64 is a bar fridge, door half-hinged, seals shredded. The wind blows it open just as a cyclist hurtles down our hill. He jerks away from the kerb as the door swings at his shins. That’s when I notice three frayed fly swats in primary colours propped in a chipped white vase, a local’s Mondrian homage to dead blowflies.

Pedalling at dawn, I see the heaps have proliferated. A decrepit dishwasher squats outside No. 70. Its dented white door rests metres away. Between appliance and door is a pagoda of flattened cardboard, the boxes for a new dishwasher and oven. A wicker basket sits on top like a crown, filled with Tupperware. For a moment I consider rifling through the containers to see if my missing lids have migrated here. Would anyone recognise me grubbing through the neighbour’s leavings? I eye off the boxes, knowing what great cubbies they’d make. Six sprinklers charge up through the lawn with a hiss. No scavenging for me today. Soon the boxes will be sodden and useless.

You can tell a lot about a household by its detritus. One verge is offering a collection of tribal masks. They look African: some painted with long wooden noses and gouged-out eye sockets, others plain, with unfortunate jug-ears and matted hessian goatees. Bear Grylls must live here.

Next door, a swathe of perfect lawn hosts neat piles of refuse in seemingly perfect nick. Two balding teddies picnic on a bright plaid rug. A shaggy mop and several old brooms are lined up like soldiers. Beside them are three obelisks, each of six floral cushions. Perhaps Laura Ashley lives here.

Our verge, conversely, is a tangle of dilapidated bikes, a leaning tower of plastic planters, two busted scooters (one pink, one blue), a pine bookcase and a tub of tattered shoes. Then there’s the junk I reluctantly abandoned: the stroller whose wheels veer annoyingly left; the playpen that successively imprisoned three toddlers, now out on parole. Anyone passing our home can tell we’ve reared three babies.

The world is divided into hoarders and purgers. I am a purger living with a hoarder who thinks he’s a purger. On collection eve, my hunter-gatherer marches past me with a box of books from the cellar.

Still in my nightie, I spy on him through the front door. I recognise my second-year French books as they spill onto the damp lawn. Then he rats on me to the neighbours, who are deadheading their roses:

“She can’t throw anything away!”

I hear sniggering.

“I heard that” I shout. He wanders inside with a smug grin.

“I’m not a hoarder,” I remind him gently. “I’m just running out of space to put things.”

A van pulls up and a swarthy man leaps from the driver’s seat to capture our bookcase.

“Score!” my husband says in greeting.

The man nods and slides our bookcase into the back of his van, slams the doors and cruises up the street.

Next morning, I make my final pass of the neighbourhood before the council trucks arrive. Nothing new to critique. I sense the purge is complete. I feel a wave of disappointment that my verge entertainment is over.

That’s when an interesting shape catches my eye. I stop pedalling and dismount. Propped against a milk crate is a leg. A man’s lower left leg. Made of peachy-pink plastic, it looks just like a mannequin’s, only there’s a gaping crack along the shin. Sticking out at the ankle is a metal rod attached to a foot. I can only presume it’s a foot because one end of the leg is wearing a worn-out Hush Puppy, laced up over a faded fawn sock.

I get the feeling this is not a rich man’s leg. Or maybe it’s just an unloved leg. I debate whether to knock on the door and ask its owner. Would that be rude? Yes.

So I speed the ten-minute ride home, grab my camera so my husband will believe me, and return to the corner house. To my dismay, the verge is now clear. The whole street is clean. The collection truck has been and gone! As I turn for home, I spot a small metal object shining in the grass. An egg cup? Don’t mind if I do!