Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 25/07/2015 Ros Thomas 25/07/2015

Mind your Busyness

I stood at the toy shop counter and waited.

If the stripling in charge sensed my presence, he didn’t acknowledge it. He was engrossed in his phone, thumbs strumming the screen. A pair of tiny headphones gummed his ears.

My outside wore an expression of polite resignation. On the inside, I was chafing with annoyance.

Finally, he glanced up. “Sorry,” he said. “Was updating our Facebook page.”

“Just the Lego please,” I replied. He bagged the box, swivelled the credit card machine towards me and calmly returned to swiping his phone.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to catch his downcast eye. But he was too busy multitasking to cope with another distraction.

Ros Thomas 31/01/2015 Ros Thomas 31/01/2015

Switching Off

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

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

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

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

Ros Thomas 10/05/2014 Ros Thomas 10/05/2014

Losing Control

I am at war with my machines. This week, I am at choke point with the toaster. It cannot contain the crumbs from even a single slice of bread. Its crumb tray is like men’s nipples, a useless feature that should have been engineered out of the final design.

I’ve taken to upending my toaster over the sink and shaking it violently until I hear its innards rattle. When it cannot cough up another single speck of bread dust, I give it one last slap to remind it who’s boss and plonk it back into its corner of the kitchen bench.

Next morning, as I pull my machine out to toast my slice of kibble rye, I see it has dumped yet another load of sooty crumbs and flame-grilled raisins from some dark orifice.

Ros Thomas 08/03/2014 Ros Thomas 08/03/2014

Robo-Shop of Horrors

I am being bullied by a machine who delights in being a shrew. We were wary of each other at first, that self-serve checkout and I. I tried not to think of her as a dictatorial tin can. I scolded myself for feeling intimidated by her sophisticated touch-screen interface and her beeping castigations. After all, she was one of a dozen talking robots designed to speed me through my supermarket. We should have been friends. But it was clear from the start she had no interest in our relationship.

Maybe her automated woman’s intuition sensed my electronic incompetence. Perhaps she enjoyed lauding her artificial intelligence over my evolutionary one. Every time we met, she stared at me with her omnipotent eye, awaiting my first move.

Ros Thomas 05/10/2013 Ros Thomas 05/10/2013

The end of the line

My home telephone is almost obsolete. It hardly rings any more. Sometimes I forget it’s even there. It languishes by the window on my desk, a wallflower obscured by the showy blooms of a potted cyclamen.

I know my home phone is lonely because as I walk past, it emits a weedy ‘peep.’ I see its will to live ebbing away, unable to compete with the thrilling gadgetry of my shiny iphone. I feel sorry for my home phone – trapped by its own limitations – good for talking, and not much else.

Ros Thomas 13/07/2013 Ros Thomas 13/07/2013

Fast Track to Nowhere

Train travel is the ultimate vehicle for people-watching. It’s the perfect antidote to the four-walled claustrophobia of housewifery. I like to feel part of the throng to-ing and fro-ing, strangers heading briefly in the same direction.

On my way to the station, I cast my eye over the dozen commuters up ahead on the platform. Everyone does their waiting in their own way. No-one looks agitated or out of breath, so I conclude we haven’t just missed the train.

Ros Thomas 01/06/2013 Ros Thomas 01/06/2013

The Next Best Thing

Here’s my conspiracy theory: today’s gadgets are made to fail. And here’s my evidence: both the vacuum cleaner and my mobile phone have carked it just weeks out of warranty.

Last Sunday, the vacuum cleaner, my trusty servant, stopped dead. The two of us were having a lovely time sucking up all the bits of Lego left lying on the loungeroom floor. (We often play games, the vacuum cleaner and I, ferreting about under the sofa with the suction at warp speed. We try to guess from the rattle – rattle – clunk! what mystery object has shot up the hose.)

Ros Thomas 06/04/2013 Ros Thomas 06/04/2013

Writing on the wall

Memory has a mind of its own. At random, it chooses what to keep. My grandmother’s handwriting is writ large in my memory. I remember her ringing me on her black Bakelite phone: “I’ve posted you a surprise, darling.” She knew my little legs would be dashing to the front gate every five minutes to see if the postie was a speck up the road.

I could pick out my nan’s penmanship in an instant, even before the perfumed envelope gave it away. Her capitals had graceful loops and flourishes – an artistic hand that also embroidered daisies on dresses for my doll. I watched mesmerised as the same hand whisked eggs into a blur to make dainty sponges.