Does my bum look big on this?

500 words: A test of courage

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/103198

I hear the ccrrackkkk… and I know instinctively that I’m in deep doo doo. Literally.I don’t dare look down – I’m too scared.Oh, come on. Really? It couldn’t be that bad.Maybe just a small crack? A hairline fracture? Like those ones that are so hard to see on an xray.I raise myself up, very very gingerly.I still won’t look down.My mind is racing. How did this happen? Okay, I’m no lightweight, but I don’t consider myself morbidly obese either.And I was being so gentle, so careful, so…so….ladylike.I am perched mid-air as I gently run my fingertips around the plastic rim, tentatively searching for an indication of the damage I have caused. But feeling for it doesn’t work. I really do have to use my eyes to make a proper inspection. Under my breath, I am speed-praying that the damage isn’t as bad as I think it might be. Please, please, please let it be okay.But, it’s not.The plastic toilet seat has cracked all the way down the left side and bits of the right side are crumbling before my eyes.I feel numb. This really cannot be happening.I am on a trip to Malta, visiting my parents’ birthplace and catching up with some relatives I have never met before. One of those relatives is my cousin. Her husband is a car collector and after a wonderful family dinner at their home he has taken us to see some of his lovingly looked-after cars.On an island nation as small as Malta, where space is a premium and car garages are a bit of a luxury, people who want a garage can buy them separately – just as you would a unit or an apartment. My cousin’s husband has a few of these garages in which he stores his cars. We are currently in the second garage, a few kilometres from his home, and he is showing us not only his vehicular beauties but also the huge amount of work he and his grown sons have done on renovating the garage.We’re talking marble tiles, under-floor heating, air-conditioning and all manner of shelves and storage .At the back of each garage, he has added a full bathroom with more marble tiles, luxurious shower heads and tapware and expensive accessories.Unfortunately for me, I need to use the toilet.Everything in this renovated bathroom, it seems, is state of the art – except for the cheap, thin, plastic toilet seat.I survey the damage…again, and wonder what the hell I am going to do.I feel like a total idiot. I have broken a toilet seat! My cousin and her husband have been so kind and welcoming and here I am breaking their toilet seat!I have a fraught deliberation in my mind. Should I tell them…or not?Maybe they won’t notice? Like, how often do they actually use this bathroom?Or, maybe they won’t find out what’s happened until after I’ve left the country and then someone else can take the blame?I have been locked within the scene of the crime for some time now and I really need to leave this loo and stop drawing more attention to myself.I feel physically sick. I exit the toilet in slow mo – I turn slowly and face the family.I know deep down what I have to do.I summon up every ounce of courage I can and tell my cousin’s husband what has happened. His adult son is there with us as I explain the breakage.They chuckle – not in a laughing-at-you kind of way but in a Maltese-shrug-your-shoulders kind of way, saying “So what? Don’t worry, no problem, it’s okay, we fix later, it was cheap rubbish anyway.”I feel only a teensy bit better as we move on to the next garage, the next lot of immaculate cars and the next marble bathroom. My humiliated face is as red as a baboon’s bottom and my head is pounding with embarrassment. But we carry on with our car and garage inspections, enjoying eachother’s company and not mentioning my disaster again. My relatives are exceedingly kind.Of course honesty is the best policy but when it comes to rear ends and toilet seats it really does take a lot of courage to own up to dethroning someone else’s throne with your own fat arse.Perhaps a little white omission mightn’t have been so bad after all?

Up, up and away!

500 Words: My Secret Fear

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/82864

The book said “Avoid looking at the onboard flight map” – so I studiously avoid it.Do I really want to see the countries I’m flying over?Particularly this year? After one plane disappeared off the face of the earth and another was shot out of the sky?But I’m here now, on the plane. A long haul flight to a continent far, far away from my home in rural Australia. My first overseas flight since I flew to New Zealand thirty five years ago as a uni student.Our flight to the UK had been booked months in advance, ten months in advance in fact. My secret fear of flying has been with me for years, and was steadily growing worse. I don’t know when or where it started. My flights to and from New Zealand all those years ago were non-eventful, so I couldn’t blame my journey to the Land of the Long White Cloud for my current state of fear.But when the opportunity for an overseas family holiday presented itself, I pushed my fear aside, hoping that the months that stretched ahead between the ticket purchase and actual takeoff would give me enough time to get a grip.Unfortunately, those months didn’t see me being less afraid of flying. If anything, my fear got worse. Internalising my anxiety didn’t help. I found myself becoming paralysed at the thought of spending hours in the air.When there were only about two months to go before our trip, and my fear was consuming my waking and sleeping moments, I knew I really had to do something. I mean really had to do something. I couldn’t let myself or my family down – I had to be able to fly. Freaking out at the airport or, worse still, on the plane, was not an option. It was time to confront my fear.I took a three-pronged approach. I typed ‘fear of flying’ into to my search engine, and read everything I could on overcoming my fear. I was even able to do an online course on the subject which opened my eyes to the world of flight and explained how planes work and what they are capable of. It allayed many of my deepest concerns.Next, I did more research to find a book that I could buy, physically hold and read from cover to cover, over and over again, to help me understand and conquer my terror.And lastly, I prayed a lot.Over the course of our four week holiday, we took six flights which saw us travelling from Sydney to Dubai to London to Paris to Malta and back home. I can’t say I was totally relaxed the whole time, but I did manage to enjoy the journeys without embarrassing myself or my nearest and dearest.Has my fear of flying actually gone? I don’t think that it will ever completely leave me, but I know now that I can manage it and accept it.As for the onboard flight map, by the time I was on the second last leg of my journey, I was able to take a sneak peak and secretly enjoy the thrill of knowing where I was in this wonderful world of ours.

Plugged in and tuned out

500 Words: Odd One Out

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/73841

We stand on busy Parramatta road on a Monday morning, the first day of the school holidays. We wait at the bus stop just down from the footbridge overpass, shouting to each other as the cars, trucks, vans and motorbikes thunder past on their way into Sydney city. A sleek concertina bus pulls up. The driver hardly looks at us as we board . Up one step, then another. We’re on a pre-pay bus and as the the door closes and the bus lurches inelegantly into the traffic, we fall toward a contraption on a pole that punches a hole in our ticket and ‘pays’ for our ride. The bus is pretty full and the only seat that’s free seems to be reserved for people with prams but the driver is oblivious and there’s no conductor to tell us off, so we park our bottoms there anyway.

The bus pitches forward. I’m sitting at right angles to an older, dishevelled guy with flowing grey hair, wild eyes and a smiley face. When we make eye contact, he launches (very loudly) into his medical history and his upcoming cartilage operation. He’s shouting information at me about surgeons, procedures and outcomes. I listen and nod. I can’t honestly say I really want to be a part of this conversation but I don’t want to be rude either. I am interested in what he has to say.

But no one else is interested and no one else is listening. Everyone else on the bus is plugged in and tuned out. Blank faces are connected to iPods whilst others are seemingly talking to themselves when, in fact, they are connected to their phones and on hands-free. Fingers tap away at tablets on laps. Not a newspaper in sight. The old guy keeps talking at me and I keep listening. Whenever other passengers do look up and see us conversing, they turn away, looks of boredom on their faces.

My daughter thrusts her mobile phone to my ear. “Hello? Hello?” I gabble, thinking someone is on the line. “Just pretend you’re talking mum,” she hisses. “I do it all the time when I don’t want people to bother me.”
I’m appalled but I totally understand at the same time. “But where’s your compassion?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes at me.
We lurch to another stop and a lady with a pram gets on. She needs our seat so I bid a hasty goodbye to the old guy and we make our way up the next step to the back of the bus. Back here, everyone is connected to their machines. Not one physical  conversation
is taking place. No eye contact. Nothing.
For a while there, I was the odd one out, and it felt good.