Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 03/10/2015 Ros Thomas 03/10/2015

Feeding Frenzy

I glanced up from my laptop as the cafe door swung open and a draught fanned my face. A spruce gent in a navy blazer entered the cafe and politely closed the door behind him. He squeezed his large frame behind the table next to mine, acknowledging his intrusion with a smile.

I resumed tapping away as he flapped open a newspaper. A waitress soon delivered his coffee and a mound of bacon and eggs. He must have been starving because he immediately shed all gentlemanly conduct and fell upon his plate like a barbarian.

Knife in fist and waving his fork over his breakfast like a harpoon, he stabbed at his eggs and dragged his yolk-smeared knife between his lips. He sawed away at a doorstop of toast and crammed it sideways into his mouth, using his thumb to wedge in the last corner.

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 19/09/2015 Ros Thomas 19/09/2015

Keeping Up Appearances

If I called it a massage parlour you might get the wrong idea. It was a parlour, of sorts, but not the seedy kind. It did offer massage, but only the G-rated variety, practiced in the hurly-burly of a busy shopping centre.

“You wait here please,” said the young man behind the counter. He was a dainty fellow with a squeaky voice wearing a t-shirt featuring a fist and the words ‘No More Mr Nice Guy.’

He ran a slender manicured finger down one column of the bookings diary before consulting a small woman in an apron: “She wants to cash in a gift voucher for a foot massage. Can we fit her in?”

Ros Thomas 12/09/2015 Ros Thomas 12/09/2015

Sitting Duck

I admired her as she glided across the pool. Reaching the deep end, she slid under the water, barely rippling the surface. I watched the sunlight flickering across her submerged shadow before she bobbed up and began another graceful lap.

She was a duck: a Pacific Black duck with a sweet face and a vivid patch of emerald in her flight feathers. “I’ve always loved that colour,” I told her as she hopped out of our pool and flapped her wings. She clucked appreciatively. I think that’s when we became friends.

I might never have discovered her if not for the single and resounding “Quack!” that rang out from the bottom of our garden last Tuesday. I flung open the back door, cocked my head and strained my twitcher’s ear. “Quack!” There it was again, loud enough that I couldn’t tell where the quack ended and the echo began.

Ros Thomas 05/09/2015 Ros Thomas 05/09/2015

Empty Nest

We’d ridden halfway up the hill when I noticed a small pile of sticks by the verge. My brain registered the elliptical shape but I quickly dismissed the stick-mound as otherwise unremarkable.

“Start pedalling honey!” I shouted to the 5-year-old freewheeler on the trailer seat behind mine. Small daughter obliged by merrily pedalling backwards, creating extra drag for my screaming lungs. “Stop!” she shouted and I jammed the brakes. “What’s wrong?” I panted.

“Look,” she said, pointing back at the grassy verge. There, on our left, was the jumble of sticks. It was a large nest, shaped like a bowl.

Ros Thomas 29/08/2015 Ros Thomas 29/08/2015

Country Comfort

Through the Wyalkatchem shop window, Capt. Jack’s Antiques Emporium looked murky and deserted. The sign on the door read: Open most days about 9 or 10. Occasionally as early as 7. Sometimes as late as 12 or 1.

I didn’t blame Capt. Jack for keeping gentleman’s hours. The town was having a slow morning. At 10.30am, mine was the only car on the main street. I’d been driving east since 7am, aiming for Beacon, on the far edge of the Wheatbelt, where I was to give a talk at a luncheon. My caffeine-deprived brain had demanded a pit-stop.

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 15/08/2015 Ros Thomas 15/08/2015

Mind Games

I stood uneasily in the cavernous carpark, marooned in a concrete mausoleum. I steered my trolley left and right around grids of pillars and bays. No boxy black station wagon announced itself with the press of my key; no tail lights winked their happiness to see me. I had lost my car in the supermarket carpark. Separation anxiety set in.

After several more minutes of rising panic, I went into hyperdrive. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I chided myself. ‘How could I forget where I parked my car?’

I replayed my arrival an hour earlier: I’d driven off the street, down the ramp, turned left and lucked a space close to the escalator. My brain seized upon ‘escalator.’ That’s it! There are two them in this shopping centre: one at each end of the carpark. I was circling the wrong escalator.

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

Life Cycle

A communal laundry in a caravan park is an odd place to befriend a stranger. He was parked at one end of a plastic pew, patiently waiting for his washing to finish. I was feeding dollar coins into the wall-mounted soap dispenser, impatiently waiting to be rewarded. I snuck a glance at my laundry companion, wondering if I should ask him why the soap was on strike.

He was reading the sports pages, his newspaper propped on the barrel of his belly. A thick neck sat on a stocky body. I guessed he was pushing 70. Tattoos rode up and down his forearms. The lower half of his face was obscured by a Grizzly Adams beard, the top half with an army-green beanie. He would’ve looked fearsome if not for his ugg-boots, one of which was graffitied with a red love heart and the word ‘Pa’ by a child’s Texta.
“Any idea how this thing works?” I said, throwing him a helpless smile.

Ros Thomas 01/08/2015 Ros Thomas 01/08/2015

Drive Me Crazy

I am yet to meet a man who can resist the call of the open road. We are gunning towards Kalgoorlie on a week-long road trip. My husband is enthroned in the driver’s seat of our hired motor home. The kids are strapped in the back, squabbling over a box of Jatz crackers. I’ve eaten an entire packet of Twisties in the sixteen minutes between Meckering and Cunderdin.

The man in the van couldn’t be happier. He croons the backing vocals to Slip Slidin’ Away, then launches into a falsetto for the chorus:

You know the nearer your destination,

The more you’re slip slidin’ away.

A road train roars past, buffeting us sideways. I catch a glimpse of the Hulk Hogan behind the wheel and his sign on the dash: ‘Highway Warrior.’