by Wendy Harmer
:'-) Sigh!
After a while the smell of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and baked potatoes sends me paddling towards Nan's dining room.
Sunday. 5 pm. PM.
We're driving back home after a really good afternoon at Nan's (considering). We looked through one of her old photograph albums. It was fun to sit around the table and turn the heavy pages, peel back the tissue paper and watch Nan swat at startled silverfish.
There were some hilarious photos of Mum in there from when she was little. My favourite was of her covered from head to toe in white powder after she had upended the flour canister on her head. You could just see her eyes looking like two little dark brown crinkled raisins. There were some real shockers from when she was fifteen, the same age as me. In one she was wearing this fluorescent blue lamé minidress, silver disco tights and white high-heeled ankle boots. She was wearing some kooky black bandanna around her forehead and her hair was sticking up in gelledback clumps – like she'd tied an electrified cat on her head. HA HA HAH!
My mum was covering her face in her hands and squealing at Nan.
'Stop it, Mum, stop it!'
But Nan just kept turning the pages and embarrassing her.
'And, Elly, this one's of your mother when she was seventeen. She tried to dye her hair blonde with peroxide and it went bright orange like a mandarin.'
Nan turned the album so I could examine the pic closely and when I burst out laughing, Nan's shoulders shook so hard with stifled giggling that one of her gold clip-on earrings fell off. Mum and I dived under the table to look for it. We bumped heads and Mum started laughing too.
I suppose it's easy to have a laugh when your life's most embarrassing moments are hidden away in an album in a cupboard and only looked at by silverfish. I wonder what Mum would think if that revolting picture of her and her citrus fruit head was out in the open for all to see.
Still, it was good to see my lovely Nan. It's her seventieth birthday soon, and she said she wants a quiet dinner party with just the family. She reckons she hasn't felt like celebrating much since Pop died two years ago. I hugged her when she said that. She tries not to show it, but I know she misses Pop. You can tell from their wedding photos how much she loved him. Even from black-and-white photos taken in 1959, you can tell.
'Nonsense, Mum, you have to have a party!' my mother nags. (She would nag the Prime Minister, I swear.) 'It's a big milestone. You have to celebrate. Eugenie's restaurant would be perfect. Marg can bring the mob down from Toolewong. All your ladies from the cards club can come, and all Dad's old friends from work.'
'I'm not sure I still have all their addresses,' says Nan.
'Don't worry, I'll track them down on the net,' Mum replies.
'With a net?'
'No, Mum! On the internet!'
'Well, I'm sure you won't find them that way,' Nan shakes her head. 'They don't have computers and things. Some of them might be in the phone book I suppose. Maybe if I hunt out one of my old Christmas card lists.'
Things have sure changed since Nan's day. She told me that her grandad's house was one of the first in Oldcastle to get a telephone. It was a 'party line' – where anyone could listen in to your private conversations! Imagine that!
But then again, FacePlace isn't that much different. Unless you put your page on the highest security, anyone can drop in and read the postings on your mirror. So you have to be really careful what you say on there. But the good thing is, if I wanted to invite my friends to a party I could send out one instantaneous message to all 105 of them – although you'd have to be careful 500 people didn't turn up. (Probably not the Prime Minister.)
Thinking of FacePlace and my missing mobile, I felt sick. I had to get home and see what had happened while I was out of range at Nan's. And soon enough Mum's event planner mind was back in action and she was heading for the door and dialling her mobile at the same time. Even as Nan was waving us off, Mum was getting advice on party flowers from her best friend Tina, who owns the Diana's Bouquet florist.
Now we're almost home and she has talked the whole time! I suppose it would be a waste of breath to remind her of what she said on the way to Nan's – that it's rude to prattle on the phone and ignore your fellow passengers. My mother thinks that when I talk on the phone it's just dumb gossip and when she talks it's high-powered business negotiations. Now Mum's yakking about Tina's new bedroom wallpaper (orchids or birds of paradise?). I'd like to know what that's got to do with high-powered business.
When Mum finally hangs up, I ask her about getting a new mobile. I tell her it's vital that I get one.
'Well, you should have thought of that before you lost it,' says my brainiac mother.
Yeah, the same way she should think about how much she needs her reading glasses before she loses them. It's an excruciating piece of mother logic and reminds me of what she always says: If it looks like you're going to be late, Eleanor, come home early. Der!
'Money's really tight this year, what with the Global Financial Crisis and everything,' Mum continues.
It's exactly what Dad said! Do they get together and learn this stuff off a script? Then I do the 'personal safety' speech, reminding her that the mobile isn't just for my benefit. It's also so that she knows where I am at all times and she can speak to me whenever she wants.
'You'll just have to use public telephones,' she counters.
I point out that the only working public telephone in Oldcastle is the one they use to call taxis outside the London Tavern. Does she really want me hanging out there?
If I am abducted by some weird cult she will be really sorry she didn't get me a new mobile. I won't be able to stop and call her from a public telephone when I'm bound and gagged in the back of a mini-van speeding up the highway.
Mum laughs at this. She actually laughs! And then I make the point that I need to speak to my friends.
How will I do that without a mobile?
'When I was a girl, we wrote letters or just made appointments to meet up and kept them. Somehow I managed to have a social life,' she says. 'Besides, you still have your computer and you can borrow Tilly's phone.'
Wrote letters? Made appointments? Is she insane? And as for borrowing Tilly's phone – how will I do that when it's already in use 24/7? And yes, I can use my computer, but everyone texts these days. That's just the way it is.
:-> AAMOF
Then I have to endure Part II of the lecture on the Days Before Mobile Phones Were Invented. Does this make any sense to anyone? I mean, how far do we want to go with this logic? Back to the days before the invention of the actual telephone, the television, the car, the steam train . . . the wheel? Was there some Neanderthal cave mother lecturing her daughter about the Days Before Fire Was Invented: We had to eat everything raw, and a good thing too!
After listening to her rave on about how she used to take personal responsibility for her whereabouts blah, blah, blah, I make the big offer to pay for a new mobile myself.
'Well, Elly,' she says, 'if you can find a part-time job and save up, you can get a new mobile, but from what I see, money burns a hole in your pocket. And it will certainly mean you'll be spending a whole lot less time down the beach with Will. Think about that.'
Gee, Mum, that's encouraging. But she does make me think. What sort of part-time jobs are available in Oldcastle? With this GFC and everything it's not going to be that easy to find one. And OK, it might mean less time with Will, but then again, just being able to hear his voice whenever I want . . . that has to be worth it. Without my mobile, how will we ever make time to be together?
Then there's the matter of keeping up with my so-called BF, Bianca.
How did I end up with a B-grade BF like Bianca? She came to me second-hand, along with a surfboard, wetsuit and a collection of pig ornaments. My real best friend Carmelita left Oldcastle last year. I've known her since the first day I went to Big-Ears Day Care Centre and she took a nap next to me clutching her blankie. Her family went macadamia nut fa
rming in Queensland. Now we talk to each other mostly via FacePlace. I miss her so much.
M$ULKECRZ
When she left she gave me her board and wettie, because all the beaches near the farm are fringed with mangrove flats and there's no surf. She also left me her pig collection. How she started collecting pigs is sort of a strange story. Her parents are Spanish. Her full name is Carmelita Consuela Martinez. Her dad is obsessed with eating pigs – bacon, prosciutto, chorizo, cured jamon, pork scratchings, pork sausages and (erk!) trotters. He feasts on pigs at almost every meal.
Anyway, one day Carmelita saw this documentary on TV about battery farm pigs and was so upset to see them caged like that that she became a vegetarian. She joined FAP (Free All Pigs) and started to collect all manner of porkers – ceramic, pottery, plush, plastic and stuffed – and ended up with 357 of them! When the family moved to Queensland, her dad promised she could have a real, live free-range pig of her own that could spend its natural life without fear of being eaten. She named it Viscount (some Oldcastle traditions never leave you, it seems). She passed her pig collection on to me and I have it displayed on a wall unit in The Dungeon. I keep one special stuffed pink pig on my bed to remind me of her.
Sometimes I think that the other pig she gave me was Bianca. Bianca Ponsford moved next door to Carmelita in East Oldcastle about three years ago and wound up in the same year as us at Oldcastle High. The Martinez, Ponsford and Pickering parents somehow became best friends, so that meant we ended up hanging out a lot together. When Carmelita left, I guess Bianca and I just became closer through mutual grief and loneliness. The thing is that Bianca and I are like oil and water and Carmelita was like . . . er . . . detergent. She dissolved our differences and, in the end, we made a really good girlfriend combo.
Bianca was the wild one who dared us to do all the things we were too scared to do – like the day we hid in the old World War II fortifications on Winchester Headland and dropped water bombs on the bushwalkers below.
Carmelita was the sunny one who always made us feel like we were in a Bollywood musical – we danced down the escalators in Britannia Mall and re-enacted wet sari scenes wading through the fountain in Victoria Square.
I was the shy one who was always asking the Big Questions – we held a séance in Oldcastle Cemetery on Halloween and talked Secret Women's Business in the dark caves at the end of Gummy Beach below the Aboriginal rock carvings.
Now Carmelita's not here and sometimes when I'm with Bianca I think we should call Greenpeace. Total oil spill disaster zone!
We were just working it out and getting a lot closer when Bianca got together with Jai and I got together with Will. If we are like oil and water, then Jai and Will are night and day. There is nothing I can think of that will ever make them see the world in the same light. Jai calls Will 'that seaweed head' and Will calls Jai 'the redneck'. The one time we went on a double date, Jai ended up tipping a lime slushie on Will's back and Will whacked Jai on the bridge of the nose with the rail of his board.
Since then Bianca and I have made a pact never to put our boyfriends together. And while we are still BFs, it seems that the older we get, the more we are drifting apart. I guess we're still clinging to each other because we don't know what comes next. If we listen to our boyfriends and never see each other, what then? Who will tell me it's time to bin my Disney Princess undies? Who will art-direct Bianca's hair and do tech support on her laptop?
Mum negotiates the car down the drive at Buckingham Palace and, as usual, parks the passenger-side door smack into the hedge.
'Come on, Elly,' she yells. 'Grab that tin of Nan's caramel slice off the back seat and come inside. You have to get your uniform ready for tomorrow.'
Oh good, thanks for the reminder. 'Cos I was thinking of going to school in the nude!
Sunday. 9 pm. PM.
I have calculated that it's now thirty-three hours since I lost my mobile phone. This means it has been gone 2040 minutes, which is a shame because I could have used at least 2000 of those minutes to abuse Bianca Ponsford.
As soon as I got home I raced to The Dungeon and logged on to my computer. There was an eye2eye from Carmelita (and we only use eye2eye when it's strictly just between us). One part stood out: Just saw Jai's FacePlace! How did he get those pix? What's the deal?
That nails it. She wouldn't usually bother to look on Jai's FacePlace. The only way Carmelita, now living on a macadamia nut farm in Queensland with a free-range pig and surrounded by mangrove swamp, would have known about those pictures is if Bianca had told her!
I went to Jai's page and had a look at the entire horror show. There are ten pics – including the unfortunate rubber glove chicken and mushroomhead shots and the chilli-prawn-tongue portrait. They are (in no particular order of grossness):
Me asleep on the beach with dribble coming out of my mouth.
Me in a low-fat yoghurt face pack with slices of cucumber on my eyes.
Me with my hair over my face looking like a yeti.
Me going cross-eyed and 'smoking' a piece of celery.
Me kissing my pink stuffed pig.
Me inside a sleeping bag impersonating a giant tartan maggot.
Me standing on the bench of the bus stop and pretending to be Beyoncé, using my hairbrush as a microphone.
If a stranger just dropped in to Jai's FacePlace site and looked at these photos, they would have to wonder why this person 'Elly' hadn't already curled up and died from acute embarrassment haemorrhage. I wonder myself as I look at Jai's profile pic. He looks as nauseatingly smug as a fresh custard tart from the Duchess Bakery.
I read some of the comments people have left on Jai's mirror. Most of them are anonymous, which is typical.
Ha ha ha!
Doesn't she know smoking is bad for you? Try to stop that celery habit, babe.
ROLF
Cluck cluck cluck! Wot a chick!
Elly is hot. Wish I was that pink pig! SWALK!
WLUMRYME?
Will's dating a sheepdog. LOL
Elly's smokin celery
Pashin on a pig
Makin like Beyoncé
Wearin a crap wig.
Heh!
The Phantom Rhymer!
GRRR! This is so not fair! I am tempted to scrawl all kinds of insulting stuff on Jai's mirror, but I know he'd really enjoy that in his own warped way. If I had my phone I could post some equally hideous pictures of him. (I'm sure I have one of him with a cucumber down his footy shorts!) But there is probably someone, somewhere, right this minute, erasing them forever.
I am just thinking of all kinds of payback schemes, starting with Jai's head and a handful of darts, when I hear the front door slam. It must be Dad, finally back from his fishing trip. I head up the hall, but halfway I hear that an argument has already started.
'Look at the time! You could have rung me, Rick,' accuses my mother.
'Well, I've been trying, but you're never off the damned phone,' Dad complains.
'You could have sent me a text or rung on Elly's phone . . . oh,' she falters as she remembers the awful truth.
I stop and listen as I hear a wet fish slapped on the kitchen counter.
'Six whiting, a nice size too, and two big snapper,' he says, making pathetic dead offerings to calm my mother. 'What are we going to do about that girl? This is the third phone she's lost! Her brain's like a sieve. It's not like she's losing a beach towel or a pair of thongs. How much did the last one cost?'
'One hundred dollars.'
'Well, we just don't have that money right now. I need new tyres for my ute, the house insurance is due, then there's the rates . . .'
'Don't, Rick, don't. It just makes me feel depressed. She says she'll get a part-time job and save up, but even if she could find a job . . .'