Columns from The Weekend West

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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Above Bored

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.

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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Double the Fun

The Two Ronnies were a Saturday night institution when I was eight. At 7.25pm, my Nan would untie her apron and announce: “Off you go then. Do the honours!”

That was my signal. I’d race down the hall to the good room and switch Nan’s hulking Thorn television to ‘ON.’ We didn’t call it TV in those days because Nan was a stickler for formalities: “Abbreviations are uncouth. We have a television set and a refrigerator and a lavatory and a lounge suite. These are their proper names!” Nan referred to the on/off button on her television set as the knob.

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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

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.

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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Success comes after a fall

Failure is not my friend, but I’ve got used to its company over the years.  It has been shadowing me at a quiet distance since I was a kid, biding its time until I tripped up or blundered, then gleefully trumpeting my wrong turns and dead-end decisions. Failure has made a fool of me on plenty of occasions and brought me to my knees on others.

Most people like to measure themselves by their successes, but it’s their failings that are far more illuminating. I like to look back on mine as faint imprints on the stepping stones I’ve used to go places. They signal turning points in my life – those humiliating times when I made an ass of myself, or was blind-sided by hubris. Minor defeats were annoying reminders of why I needed to try harder, or get smarter. In truth, my career began with a succession of failures.

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