Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 26/09/2015 Ros Thomas 26/09/2015

Closed Book

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.

Ros Thomas 22/08/2015 Ros Thomas 22/08/2015

Growing Pains

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.

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 04/10/2014 Ros Thomas 04/10/2014

Old School Ties

She weaved through the crowd towards me. I grinned and waved. I hadn’t seen her since I was 17 and now I was 46. Yet here we were at our thirty year high school reunion and she’d hardly changed. She looked softer than I remembered. Her hair was shorter. It suited her.

She squeezed in beside me at the bar. As I puckered up to greet her, I saw her eyes dart down to my name badge and back up to meet mine. In that instant, I realised she had no idea who I was.

My school-mate tried to recover her composure. “Ros!” she said brightly, but my ego had already collapsed. Our conversation lurched into a catalogue of our offspring and then we floundered. I made a lame excuse about needing the bathroom and fled.

Ros Thomas 06/09/2014 Ros Thomas 06/09/2014

Reality Bites

“I’m trying to get the kids excited about the power of words,” her email said. “They are selecting subjects (for the rest of their lives).”

It was a letter from a high school English teacher, asking if I’d talk to her Year 10s. I cast my mind back to last century and tried to remember being 15.

That was the year I rolled down my camel-brown school socks until they sat like a pair of bagels around my ankles. I thought those bagel-socks made my legs look longer and shapelier. Really, I just looked like someone who needed to pull her socks up.

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 10/08/2013 Ros Thomas 10/08/2013

Withered by star glower

Last week I had a disheartening conversation with a gaggle of schoolgirls in an icecream shop. My 6-year-old son and his little sister were capitalising on the ‘free taste tests’ from an icecream lady who was tirelessly handing them morsel after morsel on tiny spoons. While two small children debated the merits of bubblegum over banana, I turned to the three teens behind us. “Sorry! Are you in a hurry?” I asked. “This is the most important decision my kids’ll make all week. When I was an icecream scooper, we weren’t allowed to give free tastes!”

The girls laughed and one replied: “Like who’d ever work in an icecream shop!” I was taken aback. “Yep,” I said, “the icecream was so hard, my arms would ache from dragging the scoop through it. I got paid six-bucks an hour.” The girl in the middle snorted. I persevered: “Have you girls got part-time jobs?”