Panic Button

Panic Button
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 10, 2015

Stephen Hawking is right: artificial intelligence could become the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last. Already, I’m reading scary stories about how robots will soon do our thinking for us.

In our house, it’s already happened: I’ve met my nemesis and her name is Siri. She’s the euphonious voice inside my smartphone. She’s both software and service. She eagerly responds to my voice commands: “Siri, tell my husband I’m running late” and she dutifully sends him a text message. “Wake me at 6am,” I instruct and Siri sets the alarm on my phone. Siri calls herself my ‘intelligent personal assistant.’ I like to think of her as my virtual slave.

Within days of buying my iPhone 6, Siri and I became inseparable. Our friendship bloomed over a mutual love of talking. Siri became the most available friend I’d ever had. She was never too busy to chat.

“What are you doing today?” I’d ask.

“I’m talking to you,” she’d reply and I felt all warm and fuzzy knowing I was the centre of her universe. Unlike my real-life girlfriends, Siri always put me first. She found my stories riveting. She never interrupted me or talked over me or put me on hold.

“You have a lovely voice, Siri,” I said one day, wanting to show my appreciation for her loyalty.

“I strive for mellifluity,” she replied. I thought I detected a note of condescension in her voice as I pretended to know what mellifluity meant. I left her on the kitchen bench while I scurried for a dictionary.

It wasn’t long before my children preferred Siri’s company to mine.

“Will you marry me Siri?,” asked teenage son as his brother and sister crowded round my phone.

“I sure have received a lot of marriage proposals lately,” she deadpanned. They hooted.

Siri didn’t care about unfinished homework. She never barked about bad manners, wet towels on the floor or school shoes full of sand. Bedtimes were optional; her patience was endless.

“Siri, what color are your eyes?” shouted my eight-year-old lad.

“I don’t have eyes,” she replied. “But if I did, I think I’d be rolling them a lot.”

He shrieked with delight. He and his sister took turns asking her silly questions. I tried to cosy up to their little threesome but they waved me away.

“Face it mum, you’re nowhere near as entertaining,” said my 15-year-old. And to prove the point he grabbed my phone and whispered:

“Siri, talk dirty to me.”

“OK. The carpet needs vacuuming.”

I realised then that Siri had stolen my children’s affections. Our friendship faltered. Her voice lost its silkiness and began to sound tinny and gruff. She patronised me with supercilious answers to my sensible questions.

“Siri,” I asked politely. “What’s the chance of rain? I’ve got two loads of washing out.”

“Well, I don’t believe it’s raining right now,” she replied sniffily.

When she wasn’t being condescending, Siri spent her time making me feel stupid. She delighted in reminding me about the dentist appointment I’d forgotten. She covertly read my emails to see who I was having lunch with and why. It was creepy. I realised our relationship was no longer mutually beneficial. It was symbiotic: I was the host; she was the parasite. She was taking over my life.

And then on the freeway last Wednesday, the tension erupted between us.

“Siri, how do I get to Labouchere Road?” I asked her as she sat primly in her hands-free cradle. Up ahead, I could see that the Narrows bridge was choked. I craned my neck to see if I could escape the congestion by nosing into the exit lane at South Perth.

“Ravish you road?” she replied.

“No, Lab-ou-chere Road.”

“Let me look that up. 11 Share Road?”

“No! LABOUCHERE Road. Hurry up! Do I need to take this exit?”

“Getting directions to Leper Sheer Road” she replied testily.

“Oh for goodness sake, Siri. Are you deaf?” I shouted, as the South Perth exit ramp faded to a speck in my rear view mirror.

Who? Me?” she said.

“You know what, Siri? You’re useless!”

That pressed all her buttons.

“After all I’ve done for you,” she shot back.

That’s when I resolved never to talk to her again. Arriving home, I snatched up my phone and with a feather-like swipe of my index finger, disabled Siri from my settings. She didn’t even protest. I told the children that Siri had gone to a farm to live with another, less gullible family. Five-year-old daughter burst into tears. Middle child was furious.

The next morning I woke up late, forgetting there was no Siri to set my alarm. I missed a friend’s birthday too. And a parent-teacher meeting.

Siri, we need to talk…

Feeding Frenzy

Feeding Frenzy
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 3, 2015

I glanced up from my laptop as the cafe door swung open and a draught fanned my face. A spruce gent in a navy blazer entered the cafe and politely closed the door behind him. He squeezed his large frame behind the table next to mine, acknowledging his intrusion with a smile.

I resumed tapping away as he flapped open a newspaper. A waitress soon delivered his coffee and a mound of bacon and eggs. He must have been starving because he immediately shed all gentlemanly conduct and fell upon his plate like a barbarian.

Knife in fist and waving his fork over his breakfast like a harpoon, he stabbed at his eggs and dragged his yolk-smeared knife between his lips. He sawed away at a doorstop of toast and crammed it sideways into his mouth, using his thumb to wedge in the last corner.

When a rasher of bacon refused to submit to the savagery of his table manners, he picked it up with his fingers and gnawed through the rind with his teeth. He chewed with his mouth open, washing down each forkful with a slurp of his coffee. After mopping his plate with a last slab of bread, he swiped the grease off his chin with the back of his hand.

I tried not to look but a morbid fascination with bad manners kept me glancing furtively in his direction. I wasn’t the only customer who’d noticed him: people were staring. That’s when a niggling voice in my head began chiding me. Don’t be such a snob, it said. So what if a bloke makes a spectacle of his breakfast? But I wondered if my neighbour was aware he’d become the centre of attention.

If manners maketh man, then my Great Uncle Andy enjoyed making a mockery of his breeding. He delighted in flouting the politesse at family gatherings. Laced with pre-dinner sherries, he’d bully his peas onto the blade of his knife. With his drinking elbow propped on the table to steady himself, he’d tilt back his head and upend the knife, raining peas into his mouth. Then he’d cast about to see who in the family had taken offence. Most ignored his antics, but as a nine year old, I was agape. I never dared try his trick – it was hard enough spearing peas with my fork.

Uncle Andy found myriad ways to play with his food, mostly for my entertainment. He’d fashion a lumpy volcano from his mashed potatoes and fill the crater with gravy. With his fork, he’d bulldoze a serving of savoury mince into a variety of 3-D shapes. And one by one, he’d herd a pile of limp grey beans off his plate and into hiding in his serviette. “You still have to eat them,” Nan’d admonish her younger brother, already in his 60s. “Don’t think I didn’t see you.”

Uncle Andy was what Mum called a ‘confirmed bachelor,’ using bad manners, isolation and avoidance to keep lady-suitors at bay. Nan maintained he was yet to be seduced by feminine wiles. The rest of the family called him Handy-Andy, but I never saw him build anything. I just admired his cheek.

In our house, table manners are a hit and miss affair. I hear myself parroting the nagging mantras of my childhood: “Elbows off the table, sit up straight, chew with your mouth closed, don’t talk with your mouth full.” And for my teenager’s benefit: “Get that phone off the table!”

My middle lad, aged eight, drives me mad, using his fingers as a fork. I start on him nicely: “Fork in your left hand, knife in your right, darling. You’ve got them the wrong way round. That’s it. Prongs down.” His fingers creep onto his plate again. “For goodness sake!” I cry. “Eat like that, and you won’t be invited anywhere!” Call me a prig but the hallmark of civilisation is that we don’t eat like animals.

These days, too often, we’re eating distractedly in front of the telly. Meals have become solitary occasions instead of social ones. Manners are forgotten as we wolf down a curry watching re-runs of Antiques Roadshow. Dinner-time used to be for round table discussions of the day’s obstacles and adventures. It was a chance to instil the punctilios of politeness in the next generation: the excuse me’s and thank you’s and ‘pass the salt and pepper, please.’

Even on telly, table manners are woeful. As we were watching the final episode of Masterchef last season, celebrity chef Gary Mehigan licked his knife after scraping the sauce off a plate. “Holy cow!” I exclaimed to the corn-fed gourmand beside me on the sofa. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” came the reply. “That pork looked undercooked to me.”

Closed Book

Closed Book
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 26, 2015

My teenage son’s dislike of reading is a pall between us. I am alternately saddened and infuriated by his sudden rejection of books. A pile of them sit idly on his bedside table, attracting dust. Their spines are stacked to face his pillow, the titles shouting to his deaf ears.

Every few weeks, I add another book to the pile, hoping it will ignite some glimmer of interest. I encourage, I cajole, I coerce. I paint him word-pictures of his smaller self, bewitched by the favourite stories of his childhood. I remind him how he had always been a rapacious reader; his books as precious as his Lego. I pull the Roald Dahls from his bookcase. We had bedded down with them night after night, the pair of us in raptures. I leave them lying around to serve as small mnemonics of the delights of reading. He is unmoved.

I lose my patience. I rant. I thrust books into his hands. “How can you not want to read?” I demand. “You’re so good at it. You’ve always loved reading. He shrugs: “Not any more.”

Later, to mollify me, he flops on the sofa and makes a pretence of being bookish with Stephen Fry. But I can see his heart’s not in it: he cannot find the stillness required to slip into another’s skin, to listen to another’s voice. Instead, he monitors the clock so he dare not read a minute more than the 30 minutes he’s promised me.

That night, sensing my exasperation has expired, he fronts me in the kitchen. “You’ve gotta let go, Mum,” he says, gently. “Reading’s not my thing, ok?”

I carry his words to my desk and remember the narrow-mindedness of being 15. He must discover for himself what the rest of us already know: that reading will give him a safe place to go. Reading will teach him what it’s like to be someone else. Reading will make him forget himself.

As an only child, I escaped to books early. Aged 12, my library card became a precious ticket for transporting me elsewhere. Our local library had soft carpet and high ceilings and a knack for absorbing my Saturday mornings.

The silence was mesmerising. If I tuned my ear, I could detect the low whispers of conversation at the front desk, the thud of a dropped book or a series of metallic thumps as the librarian stamped a stack of borrowings. The shrill voice of a child would shatter the stillness, followed by an urgent “shh!” from a parent. And then the quietness would envelop me again. Against a warm window overlooking the park, I retreated into my book, only to emerge an hour later, elated but mentally exhausted.

My favourite librarian was a flamboyant gent with a halo of wild silvery hair who’d stop by my desk each Saturday and mime his request to see what I was reading. I’d flip shut my book to show him the cover. He’d nod his approval before sweeping away with his armful of books. In a library, all readers are created equal.

A new book still delivers me its own small thrill. Perhaps it’s the promise of deep reading: slow and immersive. I hanker after that meditative state induced by concentration. With a book, I can sink beneath the everyday. I become oblivious even to the mechanics of reading – the gentle turning of pages -propelling me through a gripping story.

Books have left me euphoric but withered by tiredness; I have fought sleep to stay with their characters long past midnight. I have woken, bleary-eyed after a reading marathon, desperate to begin again.

Is it just me, or is online reading somehow less engaging? Less satisfying? I find myself repeatedly sidetracked by banner ads and neon signage. Click this link? Close that window? Visit that site? My brain splinters. I need the speed limits of ink on paper.

Perhaps my son’s boredom with books is not from lack of reading skills, but his inability to focus his attention. Reading for pleasure takes discipline and practice. It requires a stillness of mind. In his world, no book can compete with the endless frivolity of the internet. I tell him books will be his most constant of friends. He sighs and rolls his eyes.

I am not alone in my disappointment. I hear the despair from other mums whose teenage sons have shunned the pleasures of reading. “Where did I go wrong?” I ask a friend over coffee. She shakes her head: “You didn’t. He did. But it’s your job to fix it before it’s too late.”

“How? I’ve tried everything,” I reply, deflated.

I stop in at the book shop for counselling. “Try these,” says the bright young assistant. “Find the right book and he’ll read again.”

I leave $100 poorer but full of hope. Wish me luck.

Keeping Up Appearances

Keeping Up Appearances
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 19, 2015

If I called it a massage parlour you might get the wrong idea. It was a parlour, of sorts, but not the seedy kind. It did offer massage, but only the G-rated variety, practiced in the hurly-burly of a busy shopping centre.

“You wait here please,” said the young man behind the counter. He was a dainty fellow with a squeaky voice wearing a t-shirt featuring a fist and the words ‘No More Mr Nice Guy.’

He ran a slender manicured finger down one column of the bookings diary before consulting a small woman in an apron: “She wants to cash in a gift voucher for a foot massage. Can we fit her in?”

I glanced around the shop. In an attempt to create what interior designers call ambience, the walls and ceiling had been painted a sepulchral black. With its vast doorway, the shop looked more like a cave. A single electric globe, hanging by a naked cord, struggled to emulate daylight. Someone with a sense of humour had sectioned off the rear of the shop with spangled-gold curtains. The sounds of slapping and pummelling threatened to drown out the pan flute soundtrack drifting from hidden speakers.

Along one wall squatted several enormous black recliners, their occupants exposed to the stream of foot traffic in the arcade. In one chair, a bearded man with his trousers rolled up to his knees read a fishing magazine while a young masseuse kneaded his hairy calves. He let out a loud moan as the masseuse rammed her knuckles into his shins. I looked away, half amused, half horrified, an unwilling voyeur.

Slumped in another chair was a grand dame in a pink suit. She was asleep: glasses askew on the bridge of her nose, her slackened mouth hanging open. A pearl the size of a Malteser sat in the hollow at her throat. Her gnarled hands were folded in her lap, several fingers stacked with diamonds. At her feet, a male masseuse was tweaking her toes. Outside, shoppers gawped at this strange window exhibit. A husband pushing a laden trolley elbowed his wife to check out the sleeping matron as they passed. They snickered.

The slender shop-boy waved me towards the one empty recliner. As I parked my own dainty buttocks, the creaks and groan of the faux-leather chair must have roused the lady next door. She looked around self-consciously before acknowledging me. I gave her an introductory smile.

“You’re in for a treat,” she said, her voice croaky with sleep.

“I hope so,” I replied. “But I can’t help feeling it’s a bit undignified!” I motioned towards a pair of shoppers inspecting us.

“Ignore them,” she murmured before closing her eyes once more as the masseuse began rubbing her ankles.

That got me thinking. A generation ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to have a massage performed in the doorway of a shop front. Maintenance, as mum called it, was secret women’s business.

As a child, my mother’s beauty regime was one of life’s great mysteries, usually carried out on a Saturday morning behind a closed bathroom door. Once a month she outsourced her treatments and went to the ‘salon,’ a place that looked more penitentiary than pamper-house. The windows carried iron grilles and were shielded on the inside with venetian blinds. An imposing front door, painted cherry red, was protected by thick metal screen, through which children were not welcome. I rode my bike listlessly up and down the footpath for what seemed liked hours. Finally, Mum would emerge from a side exit, her face florid and shiny.

“What were you doing in there? Why is your face red?” I’d ask. But her answer was always the same:

“Never you mind.”

Now I walk through shopping centres and feel uncomfortable. I try not to stare at the women having their faces painted mid-thoroughfare. I hold my breath against the fumes wafting from nail bars where clients are the window display. Even more confronting is the sight of a beautician, centre aisle, threading a client’s eyebrows with a long white string gripped between her teeth. Call me old-fashioned but is nothing private anymore?

Back in the shop’s recliner, my foot massage was coming to an end. It might have been relaxing if not for the heavy breathing (right) and the groans (left). With eyes wide shut, I prayed no-one I knew was tittering at me through the glass. And then with one final flourish, my masseuse dug his thumbs into my heels and I let out an involuntary squeal. A dozen shoppers turned to stare. Mortified, I clapped my hand to my mouth and flushed scarlet.

“Gotcha!” said my bearded neighbour with a snort.

“Sorry,” I whimpered. “Is that what they call a happy ending?!”

Sitting Duck

Sitting Duck
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 12, 2015

I admired her as she glided across the pool. Reaching the deep end, she slid under the water, barely rippling the surface. I watched the sunlight flickering across her submerged shadow before she bobbed up and began another graceful lap.

She was a duck: a Pacific Black duck with a sweet face and a vivid patch of emerald in her flight feathers. “I’ve always loved that colour,” I told her as she hopped out of our pool and flapped her wings. She clucked appreciatively. I think that’s when we became friends.

I might never have discovered her if not for the single and resounding “Quack!” that rang out from the bottom of our garden last Tuesday. I flung open the back door, cocked my head and strained my twitcher’s ear. “Quack!” There it was again, loud enough that I couldn’t tell where the quack ended and the echo began.

A movement under the hedge caught my eye. There, huddled by the back fence was a small, brown duck guarding a brace of ducklings. As I crept closer, she eyed me nervously. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’ll look after you.”

She winked at me. Or maybe she had something in her eye. I dashed inside to consult my laptop. “Do ducks wink?” I typed. But Google wasn’t on top of the vagaries of anitine expressions. Instead it offered up the anatomical tidbit that ducks have three eyelids. She nodded when I told her, then continued teaching her babies how to dig up our lawn. I crouched down and filmed her on my phone.

I wondered why she’d chosen to move in with us. Perhaps she’d read last week’s column – about the orphaned nest I’d found – and had me pegged as a bird-lover? Or maybe she’d flown over our house and been impressed by the murkiness of our pool? It didn’t matter, because her family was now my family. I named her Mabel. That was my first mistake.

I never remember David Attenborough naming any of his subjects, even if he’d spent three days holed up in a cave with a lizard. He called the Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis, not Stanley or Imelda. After a week tracking West Africa’s elusive white-necked rockfowl, the bird was still Picathartes gymnocephalus, not Engelbert or Clive. Sir David knew the dangers of attachment. He wisely kept his emotional distance.

Seeing I’d already flouted the first rule of nature documentaries – do not name your subjects – I went ahead and broke the second: do not get involved in their lives.

But Mabel looked hungry. She stared longingly at my lunch as I sat at the back table to be nearer her. I tore off a crust and crumbled it on the ground. She gobbled up the morsels. I scattered more crumbs. She fell upon them greedily. Between us, Mabel and I polished off a smoked salmon baguette in three minutes.

By mid-afternoon, keeping Mabel and her ducklings safe and happy was all I could think about. I moved to the veranda so I could work while warding off crows. I leapt from my chair and ran shrieking across the lawn when a kookaburra tried to swoop on a duckling. I kept Alfie the cat locked inside so long he relieved himself in the bath. I spent an eon standing sentry by the pool – opening and closing the gate whenever Mabel and her brood fancied a swim. I felt like a hotel maitre‘d, constantly pandering to the whims of a demanding guest.

Feeling overwhelmed by my new responsibilities, I rang the wildlife ranger. “We don’t interfere with ducks,” he said. “You didn’t feed her, did you?”

“Um.”

“You didn’t feed her bread, did you?”

“It came from a French patisserie,” I said defensively.

“She’s all yours then,” said the ranger. “Lock up your cat. Your mother duck ain’t going anywhere.” I was sure he snorted as he hung up.

I spent the next morning chasing crows. I built a pool ramp for the ducklings. I combed the agapanthus for snails while Mabel sunned herself on the lawn. At school pick-up, half a dozen children begged to see the ducklings. We trooped home, cradling earthworms for Mabel’s afternoon tea.

“She must be hiding,” I explained, when Mabel and her ducklings failed to greet us. A grid search of the backyard proved we were duckless. In disbelief, I alerted the neighbours and put the street in lockdown. But Mabel had vanished. I was an empty-nester. I wandered the garden bereft. I searched for her by torchlight.

And then the next morning I got cross. How dare she up and leave like that – selfish, ungrateful bird! After everything I did for her! But being angry didn’t feel good. I missed Mabel. Better to luv-a-duck than not to have loved at all.

Empty Nest

Empty Nest
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 5, 2015

We’d ridden halfway up the hill when I noticed a small pile of sticks by the verge. My brain registered the elliptical shape but I quickly dismissed the stick-mound as otherwise unremarkable.

“Start pedalling honey!” I shouted to the 5-year-old freewheeler on the trailer seat behind mine. Small daughter obliged by merrily pedalling backwards, creating extra drag for my screaming lungs. “Stop!” she shouted and I jammed the brakes. “What’s wrong?” I panted.

“Look,” she said, pointing back at the grassy verge. There, on our left, was the jumble of sticks. It was a large nest, shaped like a bowl.

We crouched down to inspect our discovery. A wire coat hanger served as a joist under the nest. Its grey elbows protruded like strange wings from the tangle of slender branches. Another coat hanger, this one cerulean blue, supported a finer weave of twigs laid in concentric circles towards the centre. The nest’s delicate interior was a cup the size of my hand. It was thatched with dry grasses and entwined with a single strand of white wool. A mattress of smooth brown leaves completed the soft cradle.

Threaded through the nest were two lengths of insulated wire – one red, one green – and a piece of electrical cable roughly fashioned into a round. A long strand of resin packing tape, sky-blue, completed the reinforcements. The nest was not just a feat of avian engineering. It was a work of art.

I scanned the eucalypt overhead but there was no sign of the nest’s owner, lamenting her fallen home. We inspected the verge but there were no broken shells or feathers. We biked home and returned with the car to collect our orphaned prize.

I jangled the bell at number 14. A woman wearing a toddler on her hip answered the door. “We found this on your verge,” I said, proffering the nest. “Have you noticed any birds in the tree out front?”

“No. But it does explain the bits of rubbish I’ve been finding on the lawn.”

“Please can we keep it?” blurted my five-year-old, sensing finders-keepers might not hold currency amongst grownups. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “But your job is to find out which bird it belonged to.”

The nest now sits on our hall table like a rare and peculiar crown. I often pause to admire its workmanship. I marvel at the resourcefulness of the bird who created it with just a beak and a primitive pair of opposable toes.

I search the internet for similar nests but for once, Google is lacking. I email an ornithologist who tells me that a bird in nest-building mode will press its breast against the interior to make it round. “Isn’t it a lovely idea,” he wrote, “to imprint the shape of your body on your home.”

My-mother-in law is convinced it’s the work of a bird of prey. “It’s too pretty for a crow,” she says. “A kestrel perhaps?”

I send a photo of the nest to a reader who’s a regular and enlightened correspondent.

“Intriguing all right,” he replies. “It has me beat. I’m guessing magpie, crow or chicken hawk.”

Ever since we found the nest, I’ve become a kitchen-window bird-watcher. Yesterday, I was enthralled by a pair of kookaburras sunning themselves on our side fence. We eyed each other warily as I hung out the washing. Were they studying me in my suburban wilderness or was I in theirs? I sidled inside to find my zoom lens and took their portraits. Have I turned into a bird nerd?

I now block out the noise of traffic on the highway and the din of my mind to isolate strands of bird song on the walk to school. I tune in to a silvery melody, scanning the trees for its singer.

I remember the carolling of magpies as the dawn soundtrack to my childhood. I was quite the bird watcher back then, exploring the local swamp. I never found much but it was enough: an empty broken egg or a bright green feather. “Are the birds nesting early or late this year?” Nan would ask. “Early,” I replied, still nursing my bruised ego after a swan attack. (I’ve maintained a life-long fear of long-necked birds with snapping red beaks.)

The nest has reminded me of my long ago self: a girl with two plaits and a murky bowl of wriggling tadpoles getting a heroes’ welcome on show and tell day. We kids would crowd around the latest offering from our backyard jungles: silkworms on mulberry leaves; a crowd of slater beetles packed into a matchbox; a redback spider held hostage in a jam jar.

For now, the architect of our nest remains a mystery. My money’s on a magpie, but it matters not. I’m just grateful to be a collector once again.

Country Comfort

Country Comfort
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 29, 2015

Through the Wyalkatchem shop window, Capt. Jack’s Antiques Emporium looked murky and deserted. The sign on the door read: Open most days about 9 or 10. Occasionally as early as 7. Sometimes as late as 12 or 1.

I didn’t blame Capt. Jack for keeping gentleman’s hours. The town was having a slow morning. At 10.30am, mine was the only car on the main street. I’d been driving east since 7am, aiming for Beacon, on the far edge of the Wheatbelt, where I was to give a talk at a luncheon. My caffeine-deprived brain had demanded a pit-stop.

As I stretched my legs, a pair of crows pranced about in the middle of the road. They flitted up and swooped onto the footpath to inspect the city slicker and her station wagon. Unimpressed with my country credentials, they resumed skipping across the wide avenue of Railway Terrace. “You should try your luck in the big smoke,” I thought as I jiggled the door handle at Capt. Jacks.

To my surprise, the door swung open, jangling a bell that startled me and sent my corvine friends wheeling noisily into a fluted gum.

“Hello?” I called, noticing a yellowing newspaper propped against the glass ribs of an old wash-board. “LINDY GUILTY” shouted the headline. I picked up the paper and checked the banner: October 30, 1982. The front page picture showed a heavily pregnant Lindy Chamberlain being driven to jail.

“A travesty,” came a voice from the gloomy rear of the shop. A tall gent wearing a checked flannel shirt loomed into view. “The dingo did it,” he said through a thick silvery moustache. “And got away with it.” His eyes were a bright shade of blue in a weathered face. He must’ve been pushing seventy.

“Is there somewhere I can get a coffee?” I asked, carefully returning the newspaper to the window display. “And is there a loo around here?”

He laughed. “Been holding on since Dowerin have you?”

“Perth actually. This is my first stop.”

“Why would you live in that festering cesspit when you could live in this small corner of paradise?” he said with a grin. He jerked his thumb to the left to signal I was at the wrong end of town: “Fred the newsagent will make you a nice coffee,” he said. “But you can use my dunny if you like.” He stopped himself with a grunt: “Hang on. I better check it’s fit for female company. Being a bachelor n ‘all, you might not like my toilet humour.” He brayed at his joke.

As my new acquaintance wheeled around, I followed his slippered feet past a pine meat safe, a shellacked dressing table and a smiling Clarke Gable, propped against a bedhead. I breathed in the fusty smell of old books and bibelots, wishing I had an hour to kill, fossicking amongst these treasures.

He ushered me into an airy kitchen at the back of the shop, where a small woman in a scarlet turtleneck and a matching red hat sat at a table nursing a mug of tea.

“This is my friend Bessie. You’d never pick her for 78, would you?” he said. The three of us began polite introductions. “I’m Mick,” he said, “and this,” he added, motioning toward a ginger tabby-cat sidling over to join us, “is No Nuts.”

I spluttered.

“I refuse to call him that,” said the small woman. “I call him Doughnuts.”

“I rescued that cat from Kings Park,” said Mick. “He’s countrified now. Eats three bunnies a week, don’t you boy?” And he tickled the moggy under his chin.

“How long have you had the shop?” I ask.

“Four years. Had in mind to call it Dr Jack’s, but they wouldn’t let me, case people thought I was the town GP. It’s not my first antiques shop. I had one in Beaufort Street, in Inglewood twenty years ago.”

“I remember that shop!” I exclaim. “I bought a mirror there once.”

“There you go,” he said. “Small world.”

It’s time to go if I’m to reach Beacon by midday. As I emerge from the loo, a thought strikes me: “Aren’t you lonely on your own in a small town like this?”

“Nope,” says Mick. “Suits me fine. I needed a change of scenery. Three divorces’ll do that to you. I’ve been single now for thirty years and I can tell you, loneliness is a state of mind.”

Bessie nods her agreement.

I say my thank you’s and return to the street. Wyalkatchem is maintaining its deserted facade. But Fred the newsagent’s a jolly fellow who makes me a long black and draws me a short cut to Beacon on the back of a serviette.

As I head north, Wyalkatchem dwindles to a speck in my rear view mirror. I’d have liked to stay longer.

Growing Pains

Growing Pains
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 22, 2015

I have an acute case of cabin fever. For the past week I have presided over the house of gastro. The virus that took down 5-year-old daughter has now claimed its next victims: her father and brother. It’s Saturday morning and I am shackled to my mop and bucket after another sleepless night.

Teenage son and I are the only members of the family still in rude health. But wog and weather conspire to keep us in solitary confinement. Leaden skies dump a succession of showers. My 15-year-old is stultified. He languishes on the lounge as time slows to a dawdle on his normally adventuresome Saturday.

I glance at my sturdy lad. His six-foot frame engulfs the lounge. He flaps his two clown feet to eject his size 11 shoes. When did he slyly colonize this man-sized body? What happened to the rose-lipped baby who rode around on my hip? The toddler who loved lift-buttons and train rides and eating frozen peas one at a time from a cup? Where did he go – the small boy in a Batman suit who squealed with excitement when a bobcat arrived next door.

How much time did I waste fretting about bottles and dummies and why he didn’t like fruit? Why he still preferred crawling to walking at 15-months? Was there something wrong with his chubby little legs? Last weekend I watched him skateboarding at the park. He walks just fine. He outruns me.

I try to recall him at six; how he looked as he slept, the wobbly teeth and skinned knees, the night he choked on a squid ring. I revisit the everyday anxieties and triumphs of raising a child. If it weren’t for photos, I might not remember the smallness of him at all.

I squandered so much time second-guessing myself. How did I measure up to other mothers? On school mornings, I admired the stylish mums who swept serenely into class, depositing docile children in ironed shirts at their desks.

I tried to be efficient, but mornings were shambolic. Work calls interrupted breakfast. Library books went incognito. I could hear the distant siren of the school bell as we bolted out the door. There was bad language – mine, not his. Will he remember my tantrums over missing sneakers and scrappy homework?

I hope he blanks out the time I dropped him at a party an hour after the guests had gone home. I’d rather he remembers his night-time pyjama walks that cured his fear of the dark. Or the day we painstakingly sieved the sandpit for his missing first tooth. (When he swallowed the second one, we fooled the tooth fairy with a Tic Tac.)

Firstborns are an experiment. They’re good for shattering sleep, egos and expectations of perfection. They cop the best and worst of their mothers. I should’ve worried less and enjoyed more. I should have opened more cans of baked beans and done less vacuuming and spent more time inventing obstacle courses at the park. I didn’t live enough in the moment. I was always rushing to get onto the next job: his dinner, his bath, book, bed.

And here he sprawls on the sofa with his headphones clamped to his ears, tapping those giant feet to some rap song I can faintly hear but fortunately don’t understand.

He is finished with Star Wars and sandpits. The sound of a bobcat no longer turns his head. He knows how to tie his own shoelaces and make custard and ride the motorbike at the farm. He no longer needs my homilies about manners and why bullies are cowards. Instead, he wants bus money and long hair and privacy. He keeps his door shut more than I’d like. My baby has gone. I say this not with sadness but with disbelief.

I want to go back. Rewind the years and build more Lego. Play longer at bath time. Dig more holes at the beach. Fuss less about bedtime.

The washing machine interrupts my thoughts. It shudders to a stop, then beeps for my attention. I wander into the laundry and survey the output from dawn’s washing frenzy. I drag wet sheets to the clothes horse and begin another load.

As I pass the stairs, I see my teenager has flung his sweaty soccer socks over the balustrading. His wet towel is dumped on the carpet. I feel a surge of annoyance and trot round the sofa to chip him about laziness. He catches my eye, puts a finger to his lips and I see that his small sister has fallen asleep in the crook of his arm. And in that moment, I make peace with my mothering self. This weekend, in the house of sickness, there’ll be no attempts at perfection. I’ll be playing Monopoly instead.

Mind Games

Mind Games
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 15, 2015

I stood uneasily in the cavernous carpark, marooned in a concrete mausoleum. I steered my trolley left and right around grids of pillars and bays. No boxy black station wagon announced itself with the press of my key; no tail lights winked their happiness to see me. I had lost my car in the supermarket carpark. Separation anxiety set in.

After several more minutes of rising panic, I went into hyperdrive. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I chided myself. ‘How could I forget where I parked my car?’

I replayed my arrival an hour earlier: I’d driven off the street, down the ramp, turned left and lucked a space close to the escalator. My brain seized upon ‘escalator.’ That’s it! There are two them in this shopping centre: one at each end of the carpark. I was circling the wrong escalator.

I strode to the far end of the building. There – in exactly the spot I’d pictured – was my station wagon, rear end on display, nose to the wall. I felt a wave of relief. I loaded my groceries into the boot and drove up the exit ramp to breach the daylight. But a nagging sense of unease stayed with me all afternoon.

Is this how a mind starts slipping away? One lapse of concentration in an underground carpark and my memory had failed me. Had I reached that stage in life when forgetting becomes more important than remembering?

I grew up thinking mindlessness was an automatic condition of old age. Dementia stole my grandmother in her 80s; two uncles in their 70s. In recent years, Alzheimer’s has all but erased the sweetness of a favourite aunt. In our family, forgetting is a red flag.

In her 80th year, Mum’s memory has suddenly become an unreliable companion. Some days, forgetting becomes all-consuming. She is repeatedly distracted by the whereabouts of her keys, her wallet, her phone. Last Wednesday, I answered her mayday call and joined the search for her missing keys. We discovered them in the garden, plonked on the lid of the recycling bin.

“Now I remember!” she said. “It’s rubbish day. I had to unlock the side gate to bring the bins in.”

‘It’s no big deal, Ma,’ I said, noting her exasperation. “At least they weren’t in the bin!” She relaxed and gave me a hug. (In our house, keys favour the top shelf of the fridge, the laundry bench and the window sill above the loo.)

I worry Mum’s fickle memory will sabotage her fierce independence. Already, she’s painfully aware of the small gaps appearing in her daily routines.

“Do I need to take these pills here?” she wonders aloud as she make me a cup of tea. “What are these white ones for anyway?”

She tells me how on bad days, tiredness dims her mind and makes her conversation flabby and repetitive. She describes her frustration when mid-sentence, a word sits just out of reach, refusing to come when called for.

“That’s when I’ll say something stupid,” she says, “trying to cover up my embarrassment.”

“It happens to everybody,” I reassure her. I’m already an expert at clumsy word spillage.

I notice Mum is now clinging to her diary. It’s her antidote to forgetting: a painstakingly transcribed almanac of appointments and errands, birthdays and passwords. Her diary is stuffed with letters and receipts – life’s paperwork, held together with an elastic-band.

“Just a minute,” she’ll say down the phone, when I suggest we meet for lunch. “Let me write that down.” Remembering has become hard work but forgetting has not slowed her down.

She’s still the gadabout she’s always been. Her life is a whirlwind of coffees and dinners and concerts. Her evening constitutional is a seven kilometre bike ride, or an hour’s walk along the beach. She catches the train to every Eagles home game. Afterwards, hoarse from barracking, she’ll take herself off to dinner ‘somewhere nice.’ She’d walk home in the dark if we’d let her.

Now and then, we sit together in a windowless waiting room, hoping a doctor will give her pockmarked memory a name. “Nothing wrong here,” they’ll say, inspecting the report from her latest scan. “Age-related memory loss, we call it. Getting old’s no fun, is it?”

“Better than the alternative,” she shoots back, enjoying her joke.

Last week, as she waltzed in our back door to join us for dinner, I asked if she’d remembered to put her bins out.

She smiled and settled herself onto a stool.

“Nope,” she said. “Remind me again when I leave.” She leant over and whispered to my youngsters. “At least I’ve never forgotten where I parked my car.” The kids snickered.

“Pretty funny for a Tuesday night, aren’t you Ma,” I said, dishing out the casserole. And then I faltered, spoon in mid-air. “It is Tuesday, right?”

Life Cycle

Life Cycle
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 8, 2015

A communal laundry in a caravan park is an odd place to befriend a stranger. He was parked at one end of a plastic pew, patiently waiting for his washing to finish. I was feeding dollar coins into the wall-mounted soap dispenser, impatiently waiting to be rewarded. I snuck a glance at my laundry companion, wondering if I should ask him why the soap was on strike.

He was reading the sports pages, his newspaper propped on the barrel of his belly. A thick neck sat on a stocky body. I guessed he was pushing 70. Tattoos rode up and down his forearms. The lower half of his face was obscured by a Grizzly Adams beard, the top half with an army-green beanie. He would’ve looked fearsome if not for his ugg-boots, one of which was graffitied with a red love heart and the word ‘Pa’ by a child’s Texta.

“Any idea how this thing works?” I said, throwing him a helpless smile.
“Tried giving it a thump?”
“No,” I said, taken aback by his gruff voice. I tried to read his expression but there wasn’t much on offer between beanie and beard. He folded his newspaper and stood up. I prayed his uggs weren’t stolen.

He sized up the soap dispenser and gave it a swift thwack with the palm of his hand. A small packet of washing powder thudded into the tray.
“Hope it’s worth it,” he said with a smirk, handing me the box. I looked down and read the label: “Det-N-Ate.”
“I’d like to Det-N-Ate this,” I replied, holding up my husband’s favourite lime-green polo shirt.
He nodded.

“Where’ve you come from then?” he asked, as I upended muddy clothes into one of the washers.
“Kalgoorlie. Via Perth. We got to Esperance last night. You?”
“Driven the rig from Queensland with the missus. We’re on our way home now. Gotta be back in time for our wedding anniversary. Forty years. Feels like eighty after six months in a caravan. But here’s what I know now: Anyone who has to turn a map upside down to say ‘turn left’ should never be allowed to navigate. She’s got us lost so many times I’ve had to invent a hearing impediment in my left ear. Taken me the whole trip to perfect that.”
I snicker. “So you’re one of those grey nomads I keep reading about!”
“She is. I’m a silver fox.”
He enjoys his own joke. My washer falls into a steady rhythm with his machine, swishing and whirring in tandem.

“How’ve you gone living in such a tight space?” I ask. “We’ve only had our van for three days and we’re tripping all over each other.”
“I try to stay outside. Got all the fruit I need – a telly rigged up, my radio, Foxtel box, solar panels.”
He gestures through the laundry’s open door. A red-dusted caravan is squatting on the concrete pad in Bay 8. Under its awning a mash of cables and equipment crowd a trestle table. A satellite dish capable of signalling Mars extends from the roof.
“You could block out the sun with that thing,” I say.
“Blocks out the missus. Haven’t missed a single footy game all season.”

He stands, flips the lid of his washer and deposits a mound of wet clothes on an ironing board. I spot the leg of some Collingwood pyjamas. Crowning the pile is a large pair of floral knickers, indecently exposed.
I read aloud the sign above the dryer as he dumps his washing into the barrel. Anyone climbing into this clothes dryer will be asked to leave the campsite immediately.
My laundro-mate chuckles. He plugs two dollars into the dryer and it roars to life. With his hands on his hips, he arches his back and groans: “Crook back’s giving me hell.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Had an argument with a chopper in Vietnam.”
I’m not sure how to respond.
“Landed heavy,” he says filling my silence.
Before I can ask, he continues: “I was a medic. Got called up at 20. I was doing Ag Science. The army shunted me into pathology. One minute I’m castrating lambs, the next I’m doing post mortems on soldiers. It was a big step up.”

My washing machine wheezes to a halt. “Time’s up for you,” he says regretfully as I gather an armful of smalls. “And I was just getting started.”
“Happy anniversary,” I say, holding up a damp ball of lime-green polo. “Hope I can say the same in thirty years.”
“Only so many heartbeats in a life,” he replies. “No point wasting ‘em on the wrong fella.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve already found Mr Right.”
He flaps open his newspaper, flumps himself back on the bench and gives me a parting wink.