quite late on sunday night

'Look at this,' Adelaide's husband said quite late on Sunday night when the light had no right still being on. They had stayed up too late watching that lovely Alisa Camplin on the tele, and it was Monday tomorrow with business shirts to iron and school lunches to be made. 'Phillip Adams telling the world he was Kerry Packer's long-time confidant.' He cleared his throat. 'Is there anyone in the world that man hasn't had a close encounter with?' He cleared his throat again. 'Except me of course.'

'And me,' Adelaide said, but her husband didn't reply.

Adelaide's husband - an increasingly bitter man - threw the magazine to the end of the bed then picked up his copy of BRW.

Sometimes, Adelaide worried that she didn't understand her husband anymore.

She leaned down, picked up the magazine and skimmed the article. It really was getting late so she read just the first few paragraphs, then skipped to the last.

'Look,' she said. 'Phillip Adams reckons Jamie and Gretel are polite, delightful kids.' She smiled. 'I think that's nice,' she said. 'I think that's a nice way to end.'

Her husband just coughed, then turned out the light.

one sunday at the letter-box

'Is this your Mum?' Adelaide asked the girl who had stuffed the pamphlet into Adelaide's letterbox.

The girl stopped, turned, looked at Adelaide. She squinted, then nodded at Adelaide in a what's-it-to-you kind of way. She took a jelly snake - an orange one - from the bag in her pocket, wrapped it around her pointer finger then sucked it off her finger with a loud and squelchy pop.

'D'you have to stuff these envelopes last week?' Adelaide asked. Her own fingers pulsed with the paper cuts of elections past.

The girl nodded again. There was a small piece of orange snake stuck to the front of her tooth.

'Has your Mum promised you a sleepover when the election's over?' Adelaide asked.

Another nod.

'Three friends?'

'Four,' the girl said. 'And boys until midnight.'

Adelaide had never thought to ask for boys.

'How much you getting for election day? For handing out the how-to-votes?'

'Thirty bucks.'

Adelaide smiled.

'Tell your Mum my Dad promised me twenty five in 1983.'

The girl squinted again. She bit at her top lip, then her bottom.

'D'you ever get paid?' the girl asked.

Adelaide smiled and wished that a grown woman could ask a fifteen year old to share her jelly snakes.

'Do you want your Mum to win?' Adelaide asked.

The girl's shoulders slumped just a little before she lifted her chin, flicked her hair and took two jelly snakes from the packet. They were both that dark pink - almost maroon - that had always been Adelaide's favourite.

'You'd better get going,' Adelaide said. 'I bet you've got this whole suburb to do.'

The girl sucked off the last jelly snake, then turned and walked away.

Adelaide moved to the front of the letter box, took the texta from her pocket, bent down and added a line to her 'no junk mail' sign.

And that includes all material related to the democratic process.

Adelaide stood back and cocked her head to the side as she looked at the letterbox. The words looked a little stark. She moved back in, added another line.

What you tell me now will make no difference to the way I vote.

Then Adelaide got in her car and drove to the shops to buy her own packet of jelly snakes.

Saturday night

'It's not so bad sitting home on Saturday night,' Adelaide thought. She had a leftover birthday box of scorched almonds and a bottle of Coopers pale.

It's not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on.

It's not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush).

It's not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush) so you're forced to watch Parkinson (which is what your parents used to watch when they started staying at home on Saturday night and you went out to drink vodka in unsafe quantities and smoke a packet of cigarettes in a night).

It's not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush) so you're forced to watch Parkinson (which is what your parents used to watch when they started staying at home on Saturday night and you went out to drink vodka in unsafe quantities and smoke a packet of cigarettes in a night) and then your husband (gorgeous though he is) starts letting out just the tiniest, teensiest beginnings of snores.

'I'd better buy him a pair of slippers before winter,' Adelaide thought.

The marble has been retrieved

Adelaide was an excellent and attentive mother whose youngest child had only been to the emergency room three times - or was it four - in the last nine months.

'So if you are going to swallow something,' Adelaide told her father, who was getting to the age when the parent became the child, 'make sure it's metal, because that way it shows up on the x-ray.'

Adelaide took a sip of the tea she had freshly brewed, then peeked a look at the child who hadn't choked.

'And make sure it's round and small so it doesn't get caught in your throat.'

She took another sip of her tea.

'And it is a bonus if it is something which makes a clunking sound against porcelain, because you know for sure it's come out.'

Adelaide turned her tea cup first one way, then the other and hoped she never needed to fish around in the toilet with a skewer again.

success is the best revenge

'If success is the best revenge, it's lucky I'm not a venge-filled person,' Adelaide thought.

Irony lost on Ken ‘KG’ Cunningham

Adelaide had some thinking to do.

‘She’s being precious,’ KG had said. On city-wide radio, just after six, he had dismissed her worries just like that. Adelaide put the kettle on. She cleared her throat, then swallowed at the memory of it all.

An avid listener of KG and Cornesy, Adelaide had finally decided to interact with 5AA. The phone was hopeless of course with children running around like that, so she composed an email. It took over an hour – what with the interruptions. But hitting the send button had filled her with an overwhelming sense of power and she couldn’t help but think of all the other issues she could raise.

And then there was the giddy moment that Graham read it out.

‘The adelaide crow and some players visited my little boy's school yesterday. He is five years old and so far I have managed to keep him out of fast/junk food 'restaurants', but the crows people were giving out vouchers to a particular junk food place as prizes. And now my little boy is insisting that we go.’

That was the point where KG, usually the first to see the subtle failings of the Adelaide Crows, first began to scoff.

Adelaide took the milk from the fridge, poured a splash into the bottom of the cup. She had thought she had a valid point. Football clubs, going into schools, giving out fast food vouchers? It isn’t good.

She made herself remember the reaction of Graham Cornes. The lady’s got a point. She smiled to herself. Adelaide had always liked that man. And she wasn’t at all jealous of his wife’s Sunday Mail column. Adelaide was just happy for another woman’s success.

No, KG continued. She’s being precious. Move on, Studley.

PS, she had written Thanks for listening to me. My children don’t.

Well, KG finished. She’s got a problem if her children aren’t listening.

And that’s when Adelaide started to think. Maybe he’s right, she thought, maybe life is as simple as that. Maybe I make everything too complex. Maybe I’m too serious. Maybe I need to lighten up.

‘Here’s your tea, love,’ she said and put her husband’s cup on the occasional table. He grunted without looking up from his new book of Sudoku puzzles.

Adelaide sat, put her feet on the pouf and blew at her tea. Maybe she wouldn’t worry about sending that email on the awkward relationship between the sponsorship deals paid to already-well-paid sports players, sportswear manufacturers and sweatshop workers.

The meaning of life is just around the corner

Adelaide finally made it to the SASMEE Millswood train park. She had been watching that train park since she was seven years old, and now, one day after she turned 37, she was finally here.

Adelaide wasn’t sure which best she liked best. Lining up with little boys bouncing with the joy of life. The officious fully enclosed shoes signs. The shade of the trees on a day that was almost too hot. The woman who stopped the trains to hand out cups of sticky orange drinks to the drivers (volunteers all). The old men controlling their boats by remote and happy to give little boys a go. The grey-haired woman with two little boys on the bowling green who couldn’t work out how to get through the fence. Men who were young enough to know better wearing railroad hats covered in gold-coloured stick pins. Groups of men polishing their trains at the end of the day. Walking back to the car with little boys still bouncing with the joy of life.

But by the time she got home, Adelaide knew exactly which bit of the day she liked best. She liked that at the young age of 37, Adelaide had discovered the meaning of life.

It’s trainspotters that make the world go round and there was hope for Adelaide yet.

At the discussion by industry leaders on the Adelaide Airport delay

Adelaide was not invited to the launches of WOMADelaide or the Adelaide Festival of Arts. She was not invited to the opening of the Federal Law Courts (which building, by the way, she quite liked and was willing to give a chance to see how it settled down). She did not get a guernsey to the Jacob's Creek Tour Down Under corporate tent. She had not even - despite her name - been at the launch of Adelaide Writer's Week.

But as one of the state's industry leaders, she did get the nod for the secret meeting with Business SA to discuss the appallingly embarrassing situation of the new Adelaide Airport terminal which was bringing in nothing but international shame. All eyes were on Adelaide. It was front page news - every second day - in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Courier-Mail. It was on page three of the AFR three times a week plus Saturdays. It was all anyone interstate and overseas was talking about.

The meeting was timely, Adelaide thought. Something needs to be done. Adelaide was very pleased to take advantage of the excellent on-site creche facilities provided by Business SA for not just the duration of the meeting, but also the networking opportunity which followed. It was never too early to get your toddler mixing with the state's future best.

It was an excellent meeting. One of the best to which Adelaide had ever been, and it certainly suited her outcome-driven style. There was so much this small, but influential group could do, and by the end of the meeting they had identified the key stakeholders with whom they needed to engage and agreed that the engagements would begin next week. The first phone call would be to the agenda-setters over at ABC 891.

'So who exactly was there?' her husband asked when they were safe in bed discussing the day they had just spent at the state's cutting edge. Adelaide could trust her husband, of course she could, but if she were honest with herself (which she could be, because the light was out), she enjoyed the opportunity to have just a little more knowledge than him.

'I'll just say this,' Adelaide told her husband, a curious - but not nosey - man. 'There was more than one soy chai latte ordered from the Cibo delivery express.'

post no-iPod life

Adelaide got an iPod for Christmas and now it was February and her life still hadn't changed.

South Australia: a good place to be a boy

‘So you see,’ Adelaide said to her father who was one of those jaded apolitical they’re-all-the-bloody-same types. ‘An Opposition doesn’t need to be a negative nay-sayer.’ She cut the article out ready to send to the federal opposition this afternoon. ‘Look at the South Australian Opposition. If this isn’t a positive policy announcement I don’t know what it is.’

Her father sniffed. He looked at the clipped article. He nodded and his eyebrows lifted as he read.

‘They’re right,’ Adelaide said. ‘It’s definitely time to ‘rebalance the agenda’. Isobel Redmond is spot on the money. It’s gone too far.’

Adelaide herself had too often found herself in the embarrassing position of getting a job purely because of her breasts just because she was a woman. Isobel Redmond was right. It was demeaning.

‘And it got worse once I had kids,’ Adelaide said. ‘Remember? All those jobs that fell out of the sky and into my lap once the kids went back to school.’ Her father nodded. He winced. It had been a terribly demeaning time for them all.

‘Men are reluctant to seek assistance, have difficulties juggling work commitments and family life, and forty percent of men over 40 have serious health problems.’ Adelaide read through the rationale behind the policy published on the website. She couldn't argue with any of that. And with only a little experience, Adelaide could see that classrooms certainly didn’t suit everyone.

She folded the newspaper clipping, slipped it into an envelope. And there was no better way to address those problems than to redirect the money away from women, thought Adelaide.

First Day

Adelaide stood at the gate and waved goodbye. Her child was happy, but Adelaide was sad in the depths of her soul.

And she was sorry that her little boy's shorts were too loose and slipped down to his knees everytime he bounced (which was often). She should have checked them yesterday. And she was sorry that he looked like a bit of a dork with his name written on the front of his hat, because she had only remembered to write it on when they were running out the front door.

She was sorry and he was happy and she was sad.

I don't have a cat either

Adelaide was sitting on the beach, watching the passing parade of faces she vaguely recognised. It was getting late, but it had been a scorching day, so Adelaide stayed, glad of the relief.

Children splashed in the shallows. Lovers held hands. Buffed bodies jogged past. It was a Brilliant day to be Adelaide.

Adelaide leaned back on her arms and smiled as the sun disappeared. The sky was still a glorious orange.

And the Dogs were off their leads. Poodles, Labradors, Boxers and all the breeds between. A not-small Dog approached Adelaide's child and Adelaide moved towards the Dog. Her heart was beating and her legs were shaking, but she kept walking, because a Dog was approaching her child.

'Oh, don't worry about him.' There was a shrill voice in Adelaide's right ear. Adelaide turned and she was face-to-face with a woman whose lipstick was bleeding into the smoker's lines surrounding her lips.

'He'll lick you to death soon as bite you.' The woman smiled a pink and toothy smile. 'Won't you boy?' The Dog jumped. His jump splashed Adelaide.

'I'd prefer we didn't die either way,' Adelaide said and she smiled an Adelaide smile.

The woman pursed her pink lips and shook the jangly lead. She sniffed a small sniff then screwed up her nose.

'You're not a Dog Person, are you?' she said to Adelaide.

'I'm a monkey,' said Adelaide. 'My most compatible match is a Dragon. Or a Rat.'

The woman sniffed again and Adelaide knew it was time to go home.

And another thing...

...she hadn't enjoyed listening to Carole Whitelock and Nan on the radio on the way home, banging on about how parents don't teach their children manners anymore. Adelaide herself actively discouraged manners in her children and was particularly proud of her children and her own parenting skills when her children snatched at things without a please or thank you in sight.

Another reason that she should have caught the tram. Adelaide sighed. All those carbon credits she had to create for a trip that had caused so much pain.

The cost of parking at the Festival Centre versus the cost of the ticket to see the show

Being an excellent mother with a middle class income at her disposal, Adelaide took her children to see Sharon Keep Ya Hair On. She was no theatre critic, but it was, as all Patch Theatre Company shows seem to be, a most excellent experience. One that her children truly enjoyed and so did she. She could have done with one less trip to the toilet, but it was excellent nonetheless.

Until they got to the part where she had to pay for the carpark. Eight dollars. They weren't even there two hours. $12 for an adult, $10 for a child and $8 for a car.

Of course, Adelaide could have caught the tram, but she was a bit more tired than usual, having been up at least twice in the night tucking little boys back into their beds. Plus, she had just discovered she didn't get a job she hadn't necessarily wanted, but would have been bloody excellent at; a piss-ant weekend course had rejected her because her experience was 'in excess' of other participants (read into that what you will about her age which she was already feeling slightly sensitive about, being about to turn 37 and ineligible for just about any course or program that might be the tiniest bit interesting); the financial advisor at the bank had suggested they could stop the income protection on her life because the only real liability on her "balance sheet of suffering"* was the approximate cost of $10,000 for her funeral; her oldest child was about to start school and her youngest child kept calling her booger-head; she was menstrual as anything and what was the point of being menstrual when all the sensible parts of you knew you couldn't have any more children anyway even if your soul was yearning. And didn't anybody ever pick anything up?

Things could have been worse, Adelaide knew that, but she didn't feel like catching the f***ing tram. She wanted to walk out of her front door, get into her car, drive it past the tram stop and into the city and park it as close to the door of the theatre as possible. Without paying eight dollars for less than two hours.

Adelaide's dark underbelly had been exposed.


*real, actual words used on the insurance assessment

A very Australian Adelaide

Adelaide loved a man in an apron. An Australian flag apron, a green and gold apron, an apron with fake breasts. Adelaide loved them all.

On Australia Day, as Adelaide took her family on their annual walk from one end of the sprawling city’s esplanade/boulevard/drive to the other – from North Haven to Christies Beach - Adelaide took a sausage from every sizzling apron-wearing man they met along the way.

She winked at everyone she passed. She liked the sound of her clicking tongue and the way her husband said ‘G’day’. She liked the buzz of the helicopters overhead, the Australian flags fluttering on cars. It was wonderful being Australian and it was Brilliant being Adelaide.

She couldn’t eat all of those sausages of course. She was full by Semaphore, her husband was full by Grange and even the kids had eaten enough by Henley Beach. She started to slip the extra sausages into her bag. It was a trick she had learnt not last year but the year before.

Tonight, she would fragment the sausages and throw them into a stew. Or maybe a curry. Yes, they would havea curry, just for a change.

‘Funny to think we won’t be living in John Howard’s Australia this time next year,’ her husband said. He had that far away look in his eyes as he spoke. After so many years of marriage, Adelaide knew it wasn’t her turn to speak. She waited for him to fill the silence. ‘The way he didn’t choose Tim Costello for Australian of the Year. That’s the biggest sign yet that he’s ready to hand over the reigns to Peter.’ Still Adelaide waited. Her husband’s wisdom would come. It always took him a while to find the words. ‘You know, so Peter’s got a chance to name his own brother Australian of the Year. Next year. Or maybe the year after that.’ Adelaide nodded and smiled at her husband. The man spoke a lot of sense. ‘I thought it was real…well, real Australian the way John Howard did that. You know?’

Adelaide’s husband looked at Adelaide and Adelaide looked at him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I do.’ And they held hands for the rest of the walk.

Living in South Australia is Brilliant

Adelaide had gone to bed feeling Great and woken up feeling Brilliant.

She peeked through the crack in the ensuite door, took a peek at her husband cleaning her teeth. Adelaide smiled.

Multitrips and the tram

Adelaide had a decision to make.

Was it more economical to a) buy a multitrip and validate it every time she got on the tram; or b) buy a ticket from the conducter on the observation that they only got to you about half the time.

Being both an oldest child and one of the few remaining people committed to public health, education and transport Adelaide knew she would go with the multitrip in the end. But every now and then, Adelaide liked to pretend that she was a radical anarchist who thumbed her nose at authority. Just every now and then.

Adelaide cures her bleeding heart

Adelaide had surgery to fix her bleeding heart. It was quick, but complex, surgery. In in the morning. Out in the afternoon.

Aorta get more nurses, Adelaide thought as she left the hospital that afternoon, and aorta get more doctors. She thought for a moment more. Aorta let more South Australians study medicine. And aorta bugger the Constitution.

She caught the tram home. No one stood up for her of course. Aorta put windows on the trams, she thought. And more seats. She sniffed as she looked around at the boring, barren things. Aorta just drive these trams out to the airport and park them there. That’s what aorta do.

Meanwhile the temperature rose. Aorta do something about this heat, she said as she turned the air conditioner up. She heard about the blackouts. Aorta do something about that, she said and turned the air conditioner up again. Thank Goodness they had the ducted system now.

Aorta do something about the surface of those courts, she said to her husband as they watched the tennis that night. And aorta have ratings on that, she said as they watched the news. It’s not right, we’ve got kids watching that.

In the end, her husband called the doctor out.

‘Adelaide's got aorta disease,’ the doctor said in quiet tones. ‘As I’m sure I explained, it’s an uncommon – but not rare – side-effect. You’re lucky there’s an election coming up. That’ll get you over the worst of it by the end of March. Early April at the latest.’ He smiled lightly first at her husband and then at Adelaide. ‘Here’s the address for the letters to the editor. And here’s the talkback numbers.’ He smiled again as he handed the information to Adelaide. ‘It’s a pity it’s ended up this way, but I think you’ll find aorta disease is much less trouble than a bleeding heart.’

The doctor smiled again at Adelaide. She let her husband show the doctor out.

Forget the drugs, who knew Leif Garrett was fourty four?

Adelaide put down the paper and went and looked in the mirror again.

With all her strength, she made herself smile.

Our favourite son (that's Leyton) out of the Australian Open. Now what will we watch.

Adelaide knew what it was to lose.

She had lost every race she had ever run, every swim she had ever swum. She had missed out on law. She couldn't find a job.

But her defeats were confined to her own small world. She had never lost on the international stage. Adelaide looked out the kitchen window and tried to imagine how Leyton Hewitt must feel. Knocked out of the Australian Open. In front of his home crowd.

Adelaide was no fan of Leyton Hewitt. She preferred a man who kept his cool. Still and all the same, Adelaide wished him no harm.

'Go Ley-Ley,' she said to herself. She shook her head and she did not smile.

She started stacking the breakfast dishes away. She hoped that people would not be too harsh. He had done his best, she thought. Still and all the same, Adelaide knew the realities of life.

Nobody likes a loser and people can be cruel.