Guest Post: Mount Waverley Follies

Today I have the inimitable Helen Patrice as my guest, sharing a suburban anecdote that will probably make you all wish you could do what this woman did... every now and then!

Image

I go to yoga in Mount Waverley on Friday mornings.  Time out from the family, from life, to have 90 minutes of gentle contortions and watching my mind chatter, chatter, chatter.  Afterwards, I stroll the small shopping centre, visit the op shop, the bookshop(soon to be defunct, alas).

Couple of months ago, I bought myself an indulgent gluten-laden sausage and prepared to enjoy it thoroughly as I walked along.  It was less than delicious.  However I remembered pastry and sausage meat, this was not it. 

Disappointment.  I walked towards a bin.  Tossed it in, along with a drink carton, and an apple core.

Then it registered.  Not a bin.  A stack of grey and black pet beds.  My rubbish was sitting on the top pet bed.  The lady behind the counter of the El Cheapo Everything Store gave me a filthy look.

Sheepishly, I fished out my junk and edged along to the actual bin, four stores along.  Came back to wipe down the bed with a tissue(used, unfortunately).  I slunk away before the Dirty Look Lady came out and smacked me.

A little while later, my composure recovered, I strolled my loosened body back towards my car.  A car roared into a parking spot in front of the hairdresser’s.  

A woman leapt out, ripped open the boot of her car, hauled out a long extension lead.  

Dragging it into the hairdressers’, she made a lot of gesticulations and some begging motions.  Emerged a couple of minutes later with a salon-only, high-powered  hair dryer.  Her extension lead brought it out to the car.

She proceeded to melt all of her Sticker Family besides herself off the rear windshield of her car.  That done, she marched back into the salon and returned the dryer, rolled up her extension lead and tossed it back into her car. 

She then fetched out four new stickers and put them on her car.  

Pigs.  

“My Family:  one woman, four pigs.”

She drove off with a hard, contented smiled on her face.

Guess she’d had a rough day on the home front.

Helen Patrice.
She's the one that's not high on eucalyptus leaves.
Most of the time.

Helen Patrice is a Melbourne poet, memoirist, and blogger. She lives with her husband, son, and a small crowd of animals. You can find her blog here, her Facebook page here, and her book of Poetry, "A Woman of Mars" in all good bookshops (or from the author herself).