Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 12/07/2014 Ros Thomas 12/07/2014

It’s all fair game

In our house, I’m in charge of adventures. The man of the house is in charge of predictability. On Saturday mornings, he sprawls on the sofa with his newspapers (and a crimson knee rug). He’ll stay clamped to the lounge like a limpet until I bundle the kids out of the house, leaving him child-free to confront the weekend’s maintenance project. By the time we return, I hope he’s changed three light bulbs and dug up a deep-rooted collection of sticks once known as the camellia bush.

“Kids who get in the car right now get chocolate Clinkers for the drive!” (Sometimes, bribery replaces reasoning in our house – especially when the Morley toy and hobby fair opens in twenty minutes).

Ros Thomas 05/07/2014 Ros Thomas 05/07/2014

Stranger Danger

I hadn’t found myself a target of public aggression since pub crawl days. I certainly wasn’t expecting a verbal stoush in the childrenswear department of Target. A week later, I’m still feeling rattled. (Why do I take things to heart?)

It was mid-afternoon and the shop floor was quiet. I was rifling through the flannelette pyjamas, searching for pink or purple ones for my 4-year-old. (She’ll only wear a two-tone palette).

Somewhere nearby, a toddler was coughing uncontrollably – a raspy bark that set my teeth on edge. In between hacks, I could hear his attempts to suck in a lungful of air, only to choke on another volley of coughs.

Ros Thomas 28/06/2014 Ros Thomas 28/06/2014

Airing Dirty Laundry

My laundry is a showcase of my domestic shortcomings. A pagoda of clean clothes is stacked on the bench. Eldest son’s sports gear lies reeking on the floor awaiting fumigation. Suspended under the skylight is a dowel rail trimmed with dripping garlands of blue and white school uniforms. My husband’s favourite polo shirt, the lavender one with the chlorine stains, hangs damply off the door knob to the broom cupboard. A load of wet washing I forgot to hang out yesterday is crumpled in the washing basket, beginning to turn whiffy.

I am not a laundry-proud kind of person. My laundry is a sweat-shop that’s either stopped up with five peoples’ dirty clothes, or clogged up with clean ones. No-one but me ever puts anything away.

Ros Thomas 21/06/2014 Ros Thomas 21/06/2014

Too Busy to Care

They were locked together in amorous congress: two shopping trolleys refusing to part. “Stand clear!” I warned small daughter, handing her my bag. I grabbed the trolley handles and tried using brutish force to wrench them apart.

“Having fun yet?” I heard a woman say.

I turned to fit a face to the familiar voice. She was a schoolmate from last century. I hadn’t seen her in years. “How are you?” I beamed.

Ros Thomas 14/06/2014 Ros Thomas 14/06/2014

Tasty Treasures

I lifted the metal lid of our circa-1958 shamrock-green letterbox. Small daughter handed me with a wodge of envelopes, clamped with a fat elastic band. “Bills!” I groaned.

Four-year-old was now scrabbling behind the rickety mailbox post. “Something fell out!” she shouted and flapped her discovery above her head.

It was a postcard. A striking botanical drawing stood out against an inky background. It pictured the life cycle of a sunflower, drawn in exquisite detail in every incarnation, from bud to bloom to seed.

Ros Thomas 07/06/2014 Ros Thomas 07/06/2014

Driven to Distraction

My first car was a 1976 custard-coloured Datsun 200B. I bought it from my Uncle Andy for $800. Aged 19, I was now free to explore my Perth universe.

My car had no air-conditioning, no wing mirrors and often no petrol. After a week of crunching the gears to locate reverse, I snapped off the gearstick knob into my hand. “Knobs don’t like rough treatment,” Mum sighed. I rammed a squash ball onto the gearstick and drove it like that for the next four years.

My Datsun boasted six ashtrays – we teenagers didn’t let driving inconvenience our smoking. The flip-down trays in each door panel blew ash in our faces as soon as we wound down a window. Two larger ashtrays slid side by side out of the dashboard, side by side, in case driver and passenger didn’t want to share.

Ros Thomas 31/05/2014 Ros Thomas 31/05/2014

Lending an Ear

Someone once said train stations are the gates to the glorious and the unknown. As our train slid into Fremantle station, the kids and I spilled out into the chequerboard foyer. I stopped to do up small son’s shoelaces. That’s when I heard a quavery voice over my left shoulder:

“Can you plug me in?”

We were the last passengers left. All I could see were four small grey wheels behind a mobile advertising stand. I took two more steps and realised the wheels belonged to a motorised wheelchair. It was tucked into the corner, backed up to the wall. Its occupant, an old man with rheumy eyes and a grubby green shirt. His woollen vest was peppered with moth holes. He waved a power cable at me.

Ros Thomas 24/05/2014 Ros Thomas 24/05/2014

Come Rain or Shine

Every morning, even before I roll out of bed, I wonder how the sky is behaving. I lie still for those few moments between sleep and wakefulness and take a guess at the weather.

I prise open my right eye (the one nearest the window) and make a mental measurement of the light streaming in through the gap in the curtains. Sometimes, the brightness bounces painfully off my retina. I clamp my eye shut and my brain registers with a jolt that it’s sunny outside. Other mornings, there’s only a soft splash of daylight that dapples the carpet and I sense it’s overcast, clouds on the move.

As I throw back the doona and my feet kiss the floor, I can tell you whether the air this morning is crisp, chilly, bracing or brisk. Crisp is any May morning before 7am. Chilly is unpleasantly cold. Bracing is cold, but pleasantly invigorating. Brisk is for the conversation I have with the man next door after nipping out to get The West in my nightie.

Ros Thomas 17/05/2014 Ros Thomas 17/05/2014

A Woman’s World

We met in the rice cracker aisle. I hadn’t seen him in 25 years. We’d worked in radio together when I was the bumbling cadet and he was the news editor, sure-footed and velvet-tonsilled. I’d been in awe of him – or scared of him – one and the same thing to a 21-year-old feeling hopelessly inadequate. I can remember how he’d grow more and more frenzied as the clock sped towards news hour. He’d pound away on his IBM electric, a gravity-defying stub of ash dangling from the cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth.

Now he was barefoot shopping in Coles and I was loading up on Saos for school lunches. We made small talk about radio days before he announced matter-of-factly: “You chicks have got it made. The media’s biased towards women. I should know – I got the sack for being male.”

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.