In Bed with Jocasta Page 2

  Back on his treadmill, Fluffy runs faster than ever, as Jocasta watches with a gasp of admiration. ‘What a mouse. An exceptional mouse.’

  My Mother Killed My Stove

  Suddenly, all the battles of childhood are over. After forty years of losing every argument with my mother, I’ve got the goods on her. she has come to sydney and cleaned our cooktop to death. she has killed it armed with nothing more than a pump-pack of spray and Wipe and an over-zealous attitude to germs.

  Of course, all mothers think their children live in filthy hovels. But not many have actually cleaned one of their son’s appliances to death — squirting in so much spray and Wipe that the house is plunged into darkness each time we turn on the hotplate.

  Of course, we were expecting her visit. ‘My mother’s coming to stay,’ I said to Jocasta a week ago, and watched her eyes flicker with fear as she reached for the nearest Wettex.

  My mother usually arrives from the country wearing white cotton gloves — designed to ward off the germs of the city in general, and our house in particular. Does she have the cleanliness problem, or do we? Is she compulsively clean, bordering on clinical insanity? or are we animals who live in our own filth? It’s an open question; but certainly standards are different.

  In our last house Jocasta finally snapped, accused my mother of suffering from obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and advised her to invest in some sort of psychiatric medication. My mother replied that she was happy as she was and suggested that, since advice was being handed around, Jocasta might like to invest in a new Wettex.

  Who won that particular battle of wills? I find it difficult to assess the evidence at the moment, especially with all the noise of Jocasta simultaneously vacuuming the hall rug with one hand while she dusts off the bookshelves with the other.

  In between, Jocasta is yelling instructions at the rest of us. She says I’ve got to finish the bathroom and then move on to the stove — getting it so clean, Mum won’t be tempted to reach into the cupboard for the Spray and Wipe as soon as she arrives.

  ‘I’m not attacking your family,’ says Jocasta. ‘All I’m saying is that when your father comes we have to hide all the grog, and when your mother comes we have to hide all the cleaning products.’

  We clean for two days solid, at which point my mother arrives. Despite our efforts, I can see her having to steady herself as she gets her first glance at the kitchen.

  ‘It’s lovely, darling,’ she says, pulling on her white gloves that little bit more tightly. She wanders around the house, using that tone of false brightness which is reserved for mothers viewing their son’s life choices.

  My mother’s problem with germs has certainly been around for a while. At age eight, my career in the Boy scouts was cut short after I telephoned my mother from the bush adventure camp and mentioned there was nowhere to wash my hands after going to the toilet.

  ‘Don’t move, I’ll be right there,’ she said, before sprinting to the car and driving the four hours up the highway, spinning into the camp car park with dust flying.

  ‘Why are you going back to Sydney?’ yelled the other boys, shouting after the departing car.

  ‘To wash my hands,’ I yelled back.

  All these years later, it’s not me, but Batboy and The space Cadet who are receiving the wisdom of her instruction. Batboy, for one, has turned into a bit of a recruit. ‘You know, dad,’ he admonishes, toothbrush in hand, his mouth frothing like a rabid dog, ‘you really need to scrub for at least five minutes to get them properly clean.’

  The space Cadet, though, is a different matter.

  Jocasta and I leave early for work, and so The Gloved-One takes the job of giving him breakfast. It doesn’t go well.

  The Space Cadet refuses to eat his toast, so my mother decides to use some of her advanced parenting techniques. The ones which have left me such a well-balanced and stable person.

  She walks into the room, stands in front of The Space Cadet and pretends to cry. ‘If you don’t eat your toast,’ she tells him, sniffling, ‘I’ll get in trouble with your daddy. And then I’ll cry and cry.’

  Returning to the room some minutes later, she sees the plate is empty. ‘Good boy! You’ve eaten it all up!’

  ‘Well, no,’ says The Space Cadet, a glint in his seven-year-old eyes. ‘I want you to get in trouble with Daddy. So I’ve hidden it.’

  The Gloved-One begs and pleads. But The Space Cadet is resolute.

  For the last days of her visit, she knows it is out there: somewhere dark and out of sight, the Lost Toast, festering away, shooting its spores of germs into the air. For someone with a germ phobia, it is torture.

  We mount search parties, The Space Cadet sitting silent, thrilled with his power, Batboy crawling around, staring under chairs, my mother looking distracted, her fingers nervously plucking the edge of her gloves.

  All in all, it’s little wonder she took it all out on the cooktop — cleaning it into electrical oblivion. Whatever the repair fees, I feel it’s worth it.

  A day after her departure, The Space Cadet languidly reaches behind the back wheel of the couch, and pulls out the piece of toast. He gives me a restrained smile, and drops it in the bin.

  Looking back at my childhood, I don’t think I was ever much of a match for my mother. But I’ve had a hand in raising someone who is.

  Yes, We’re Australian

  Every tourist guide to Australia has an extensive guide to Australian slang — defining words like cobber, cossie and fair dinkum. Yet the truly unique things — our cultural rules and tribal beliefs — are left undocumented.

  If our visitors really want to fit in, here’s what they’ll need to know:

  The bigger the hat, the smaller the farm.

  The shorter the nickname they give you, the more they like you.

  It’s not a genuine Australian saying unless it involves a paddock, a lizard or a rat.

  A flash sports car driven by a middle-aged man does not incite envy — as it does in America — but hilarity.

  It’s not a picnic without a bull-ant climbing up your bum.

  It is proper to refer to your best friend as ‘a total bastard’, but your worst enemy as ‘a bit of a bastard’.

  Whether it’s the opening of Parliament, or the launch of a new art gallery, there is no event which cannot be improved by the addition of a sausage sizzle.

  All banks are bastards.

  A hamburger must contain beetroot.

  It’s considered better to be down on your luck than up yourself.

  The phrase ‘we’ve got a great lifestyle’ means everyone in the family drinks too much.

  If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie, he’s probably a media billionaire. Or, just conceivably, a wharfie.

  There is no food that cannot be improved by the application of tomato sauce.

  People with red hair should be nicknamed ‘Blue’, just as short people should be labelled ‘Lofty’.

  On the beach, all Australians hide their keys and wallet by placing them inside their sandshoes. No thief has ever worked this out. We may have very stupid thieves. or really stinky sandshoes.

  Industrial design knows of no article more useful than the milk crate.

  All our best heroes are losers.

  The Alpha male in any group is he who takes the barbecue tongs from the hands of the host, and blithely begins turning the snags.

  It’s not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to hold.

  Beer should be served so cold it makes your ears hurt.

  A thong is not a piece of scanty swimwear, as in America, but a fine example of footwear. A group of sheilas wearing black rubber thongs may not be as exciting as you had hoped.

  A gum leaf, crushed, in the hand, is the best smell ever.

  There shall be no dobbers.

  Historians believe the widespread use of the word ‘mate’ can be traced to the harsh conditions on the Australian frontier in the 1890s, and the development of a code of mutual aid
, or ‘mateship’. Alternatively, we may all be just really hopeless with names.

  The wise man chooses a partner who is attractive not only to himself, but also to neighbourhood mosquitoes.

  If it can’t be fixed using panty-hose and fencing wire, it’s not worth fixing.

  All parties, in however grand and well-prepared a house, shall be held, cramped and noisy, in the kitchen.

  The most popular and widely praised family in any street is the one that just happens to have the swimming pool.

  A swallowed fly, while disgusting, must be greeted with the plucky comment: ‘Mmm, protein.’

  We invented everything in the world worth inventing, but then sold the patent to the Yanks.

  Smearing toast with a spread that’s black and salty, and which has the appearance of axle-grease, is widely viewed as a good way to start the day.

  Every older Australian has a bullshit theory involving ants, a kookaburra laughing and the likelihood of rain, and every theory is the direct opposite of the last one you heard.

  If invited to a party, you should take cheap red wine, but then spend all night drinking the host’s beer. Don’t worry: he’ll have catered for it.

  The phrase ‘a simple picnic’ is not known. or at least not acted upon. You should take everything. If you don’t need to make three trips back to car, you are not trying.

  If there’s any sort of free event or party within a hundred kilometres, you’d be a mug not to go.

  A kid, upon burying his father in the sand, shall always give him breasts larger than those of his mother.

  Every surname, brand-name and motor-car spare part must be shortened to the point of incomprehension, as in the sentence: ‘If I hadn’t stuffed the diff, I’d have taken Blacky to Maccas.’

  There comes a time in every Australian’s life when he or she realises that the Aeroguard is far, far worse than the flies.

  Our national character means that we cry during the first verse of our national anthem, but can’t remember the words of the rest.

  And, finally, don’t let the tourist books fool you. No one says ‘cobber’.

  Helpful? No worries!

  Rat-bagged

  In the school science curriculum of the mid-1970s, it was mandatory to dissect a rat at every opportunity. If your teacher wanted to explain water evaporation in the Murray-Darling basin, he’d work in some sort of rat dissection. Ask him the atomic weight of magnesium, and the answer would come back: ‘Hand me a rat.’

  It was even worse in my class, because my teacher was using rat dissection as part of a long-term scientific project — trying to establish just how many times he could, via rat dissection, cause me to faint or throw up.

  Actually, I fainted only once, but that one faint was so spectacular, so breathtakingly humiliating, that you could understand the teacher’s desire to see the moment repeated. (This, of course, was in the days before the Internet, so teachers had to make their own fun.)

  The occasion was a lecture about the dangers of heroin abuse, in which the teacher, quite naturally, took the opportunity to dissect a rat. This, he said, was in order to show us the intricate wonders of the human body — a task which, speaking personally, I felt was more easily achieved in French class in idle contemplation of Madame Chabrol.

  But, for him, it had to be the rat, which he had pinned to a board and was just pointing out the wonders of the little lungs when I sought permission to ‘go to the bathroom’. Permission granted, I strode manfully towards the door, teetered a little in front of the teacher’s desk, turned a sharp shade of white, and then fell face forward onto the floor.

  How long did I stay there, unconscious? Reports were uncertain — muffled as they were by the sound of thirty-two classmates pissing themselves with laughter. What’s clear is that I remain very worried by any mention of rodents.

  The rodents who last week invaded our kitchen are mice rather than rats, but still there’s the sensation that total humiliation cannot be far off. For a start, The Space Cadet has to be convinced they are a totally different species to his pet mouse Fluffy, who continues to gambol — oblivious — on his Lazy Vue viewing platform.

  Over a week, I set about twenty traps, twelve of which fail to go off (the mice regarding them largely as serving platters for that day’s cheesy offering); seven of which slam shut, but on top of my fingers; and one of which — no doubt due to some freakish accident — actually kills a mouse.

  Which is when Locky arrives to stay.

  Locky is our mate from the bush, a rice farmer who wears genuine bush boots and a genuine bush hat and can build a tractor engine using nothing but a roll of chook wire and a pair of old socks. on all indications, he is the sort of bloke unlikely to have fainted during science class.

  ‘What would you do about our mice plague?’ says Jocasta, instantly cheering to the thought that at last the house has a proper bloke in it.

  ‘Yes, what would you do, Locky?’ says Batboy, pausing in his drooling admiration of Locky’s hat.

  And so Locky launches into three hours of increasingly unlikely bush stories in which he single-handedly defeats ever larger armies of mice, right up to the story of how the mice lifted his whole barn and carried it into Deniliquin and Locky had to carry it back. All of which is told as Jocasta, Batboy and The Space Cadet form a small and ever-more-adoring circle, demanding details of the trap that finally defeated the mice.

  ‘Ah,’ said Locky, ‘it was a traditional bush trap.’

  And so Locky described it, while Batboy, following his instructions, built the thing.

  I felt sorry for Locky really; it was such a stupid contraption, like something a kid would dream up. It featured an empty beer bottle, lying on a shelf, its neck sticking over the edge, a piece of cheese shoved in its mouth, and a bucket of water below. An old sock (there’s always an old sock in Locky’s contraptions) goes over the big end of the bottle, and the neck is greased with butter. The mouse — sure, Locky, sure — will walk along the bottle, towards the cheese, using the traction of the sock, step onto the butter, fall, then drown in the water.

  All in all, a daft idea and proof once again of the tragic fantasy world in which many of our farmers are now living. Indeed, as we sat round the dinner table I started advising Locky how he needed to spend more time in town, updating his ideas, trying to get more of a grip on reality, which was exactly when we heard the first plop.

  One drowned mouse. The first of eight caught since in The Locky Trap.

  Only trouble is, Locky’s gone home now, so it’s up to me to reach into the water and fish out the little dead bodies, turning as I do it various shades of blue, green and yellow. And up to me to turn Fluffy’s mouse house discreetly away.

  Have I fainted yet? Surprisingly, no. Could it be that The Locky Trap is finally making a man of me?

  About-to-Expire Eggs

  When I was sixteen and living alone with my father, the culinary standard was not high. For breakfast we would both have two raw eggs, stirred up in a glass of milk with a fork — me adding a spoonful of chocolate Quik as a concession to youth. For dinner we would have lamb chops, done under the griller, served with mashed potato and frozen peas.

  We would have this meal on Mondays. Then we’d have it on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays. On Thursdays. And on Fridays. From this distance, I can’t recall the weekends, but I have a strong suspicion they involved chops, potatoes and peas. I also remember thinking the whole thing very tasty.

  Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, has reached the bestseller lists by promoting the simplicity of his recipes — but he’s nothing on my dad. Or on a thousand other suburban chefs. They have really simple recipes. Perhaps it’s time someone recorded their subtle joys.

  Ted’s Lamb Chops and Mash

  Buy 10 kilos of lamb chops and place in the freezer. Each day, before work, remove six chops and defrost. Place under griller until burnt. Serve with mash, peas and lashing of tomato sauce. Beautiful! (Hint: if special guests are attending dinn
er, why not chop a tomato in half and also bung under the griller.)

  Back-of-Cupboard Bake

  Jamie oliver loves choosing ingredients from the same region — and so do we. In particular: the region at the very back of the cupboard.

  Step 1: Root around in there, pulling out every canned product you can find, and open the lot.

  Step 2: Check at least two of them are soup. If not, add water.

  Step 3: Pour over Deb Mashed Potato, and cook until hot, or until phone rings with better offer.

  About-to-Expire Eggs

  Jamie oliver says one should be guided by what’s fresh on one’s daily visit to the markets. We take rather the opposite approach: preferring to be guided according to what’s in our fridge and about to expire. About-to-Expire Eggs, On-The-Turn Mince, and Get-in-Quick Lasagne all involve a commitment from the whole family: you’ll knock off the lot tonight. And hope.

  Twice-Dropped Sausages

  Jamie offers Twice-Cooked Duck, but it’s hardly as simple as twice-dropped snags. In this recipe, the snag is first dropped off the side of the grill into the barbecue itself, thus picking up a generous coating of ash, and is then — just before serving — dropped on the kitchen floor, thus picking up subtle Asian influences, themselves twice-dropped during last night’s stir fry. It’s a recipe so good, you’ll never want to reveal its secrets.