Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 29/11/2014 Ros Thomas 29/11/2014

Dressing Down

I thought I’d arrived early, but to my dismay I was unfashionably late. A warehouse frock sale waits for no woman. The hall opened at 9. It was now 20 past and the building was heaving with bargain hunters.

I’m normally a prudent shopper, but my commonsense turns to compulsiveness when my favourite brand is discounted by 70-percent. I paused in the doorway to absorb the arresting sight of a hundred women on a shopping assault. A flock of twenty-somethings swooped past me and descended on a table of $20 jeans like seagulls on fish ‘n chips. I scampered over to join them.

Ros Thomas 20/07/2013 Ros Thomas 20/07/2013

Taking it on the chin

It’s lucky beards don’t hold grudges because I make damning generalisations about their owners. Shifty weak-chinned buggers they are. I like to know where the beard ends and the man begins. Why the wearers of crumb-catchers always stroke their whiskers while thinking about what they’re hiding behind.

I’ve had some bad run-ins with beards. It started in the 70’s with Catweazle, the TV wizard. I watched every episode from behind a bean bag, revelling in being scared witless. I don’t know if it was Catweazle’s ratty goatee, the crazed look in his eyes or that toad he kept in the pocket of his filthy brown cloak, but that warlock did some lasting damage. Beards gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Ros Thomas 30/03/2013 Ros Thomas 30/03/2013

Pay your moody dues

Apparently PMS doesn’t exist. Any woman claiming a monthly permit to grumpiness, gloominess and general wretchedness has had her licence revoked. Period.

So says a team of Canadian scientists who’ve decided Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is not a syndrome at all, but a convenient excuse for 80-percent of the world’s women to pay out on their partners once a month. Clearly those scientists haven’t met my husband – a man who consistently gets my goat one week in four.

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

Chewing the Fat

A few weekends back a girlfriend and I were at the beach for our first swim of the summer. It was an overcast morning and the water looked dark. We were trying to stave off the inevitable shock of cold water by discussing our chances of getting eaten by a shark. She turned to me and said: “Any self-respecting shark would take one look at me and say: Geez, I’m not that hungry.”

A real friend doesn’t lie about her weight. A real friend understands that a woman’s weight can be central to her mood: thin = happy, not thin = grumpy. My bathroom scales are an electronic slab of nastiness hell-bent on destroying my morning.

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.