Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 15/11/2014 Ros Thomas 15/11/2014

Forget Me Not

Something about her was different. She looked smaller than I remembered. The hunch of her shoulders had become more pronounced. Gone was her trademark copper rinse, her hair now blowsy and grey. “Auntie G!” I called, spotting her several trolley lengths away in Coles. She was holding open a freezer door, studying a shelf of frozen peas, but didn’t react. I parallel parked my trolley and leaned over. “Auntie G!” I repeated, touching her lightly on the shoulder.

She jerked around and stared at me. “It’s Rosi,” I said, sensing her confusion. Perhaps I’d frightened her? She gave me a wan smile but no glimmer of recognition. I began to feel uncomfortable. What should I do next?

Ros Thomas 14/06/2014 Ros Thomas 14/06/2014

Tasty Treasures

I lifted the metal lid of our circa-1958 shamrock-green letterbox. Small daughter handed me with a wodge of envelopes, clamped with a fat elastic band. “Bills!” I groaned.

Four-year-old was now scrabbling behind the rickety mailbox post. “Something fell out!” she shouted and flapped her discovery above her head.

It was a postcard. A striking botanical drawing stood out against an inky background. It pictured the life cycle of a sunflower, drawn in exquisite detail in every incarnation, from bud to bloom to seed.

Ros Thomas 26/10/2013 Ros Thomas 26/10/2013

Family Territory

Sometimes, a two hour drive is all it takes to turn humdrum to holiday.

“How about a romantic weekend away?” my Lothario whispers across his pillow, our love life handicapped by the three-year-old octopus suckered between us.

“Just a couple of days hey?” he murmurs. “Somewhere exotic. By the beach. Away from all this.”

I could have kissed him. Instead, my arm is paralysed by the dead weight of a sleeping child’s leg-tentacle flopped across my chest.

“Promise?” I whisper back.

“No” comes the reply, “but the weekend after next I have to go to my high school reunion in Bunbury. I’ve booked us all into the Lord Forrest hotel.”

Ros Thomas 02/03/2013 Ros Thomas 02/03/2013

Our Family Tree

How wonderful to find a fig tree growing wild, the tips of its branches sagging under the weight of dozens of fat purple figs.

Sixty-six years ago my mum discovered a giant fig tree jutting out from the banks of the Swan River. To reach its uppermost branches where the ripest figs were sunning themselves, she would climb barefoot up the rocky cliff and shimmy out along the sturdiest branches. She could only pick as many as she could hold in one hand without falling off her perch. And there she would sit, scarlet juice running down her chin while her brother shouted up from the beach: ‘Drop some down to me Sis! C’mon! It’s not fair!’ (A fear of heights and pianist’s hands meant climbing trees was not his forte.)

Ros Thomas 23/02/2013 Ros Thomas 23/02/2013

Racking up the years

My first bra came from Jayne Mansfield’s closet. At least it felt like it did. It was pale pink satin and doubled as a bullet-proof vest. The label said ‘Action’ bra but that was the last thing I was going to get in it. The hooks at the back were large enough to catch herring, there was not a skerrick of elastic for comfort and I needed to be Houdini to get in or out of it. Houdini, or a locksmith.

That bra came from the bottom of mum’s drawer of antiquity and I’m pretty sure the cups hadn’t seen breasts since 1953. But I was 13 and desperate. It was Thursday night, there was school on Friday and late night shopping hadn’t been invented. My breasts and I could not face another round of heckling from the leering boys who hung on the fence watching our school softball.

Ros Thomas 26/01/2013 Ros Thomas 26/01/2013

Under the Covers

I learnt more about men and sex in 1985 than I should have, thanks to a book called The Hite Report. It was a fat well-thumbed paperback, containing interviews with hundreds of blokes on everything from ‘What Men like Women to Wear’ to ‘How A Man Likes to be Seduced.’ Its pages were coffee stained at juicy junctions, underlined and exclamation marked, and I discovered a silverfish entombed near the spine in a chapter devoted to Men’s Fantasies. (‘Stop talking’ featured heavily in the advice to women.)

Ros Thomas 12/01/2013 Ros Thomas 12/01/2013

Tangling with a bad hair day

A hair cut is not a trifling matter. This, men do not understand. To a man, a haircut is a way to kill fifteen minutes of a lunch hour. It involves no more mental taxation than reclining in a swivel chair arguing with a barber about Shane Warne’s discipline problem.

For women, a haircut is the fastest route to an identity crisis. Period. It can coincide with that too. I should know – I just had one – a haircut, and a freak-out. Some people will no longer recognize me because I’ve gone short – I had a whole 3 centimetres cut off. For me, a change is nowhere near as good as a holiday.

Men should also know that women have a fraught relationship with their hair because hair the only thing that can be changed at whim. And let’s face it, most women grow up wanting to change everything about themselves. Well at least I did.

Ros Thomas 05/01/2013 Ros Thomas 05/01/2013

Mutton dressed as man

My husband is so fashion forward he thinks he’s the new black. Apparently, the new black is a portly but cute middle-aged father of three with Henry Kissinger glasses decked out in an electric yellow Polo shirt and cargo shorts with a hammer holder.

He’s not alone – I know other charismatic men of a certain age who dress smartly at the office, but who throw caution to the wind at weekends and go out in public looking like a one man sailing regatta – all stripes and baggywrinkled Bermudas – convinced they’re the ship’s biscuit.