Naive Psychologist

‘If you don’t deadhead those roses you won’t get any more blooms.’ If she had said it once, Adelaide had said it a thousand times. They had a lovely lot of icebergs (roses, not lettuces) in their garden, if only her husband could drag himself away from the cricket to keep them maintained.

Not that Adelaide minded doing it for herself. Oh, no. It was lovely to spend a summer evening in the front garden clipping at the roses and nodding to the evening joggers as they passed by. They didn’t smile so much these days, Adelaide thought. And they all had ipods in their ears. Adelaide shook her head. She was old enough to know that progress couldn’t be stopped. If they wanted to deafen themselves then what business was it of hers?

But she didn’t have time for the roses this week. The tomatoes were coming in.

It seemed like they had to be tied a bit more every night. The ripe ones had to be picked. The water had to be kept up. Especially in this heat.

And soon there would be enough for making the sauce.

‘I won’t use so many cloves this year,’ Adelaide said to her husband. She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t answer, but she had thought that he might. He had been complaining about the cloves all year. It was one of those experiments gone wrong.

‘I might make some jars of pasta sauce,’ she said. ‘There’s a woman at work, her mum’s Italian, she said she’ll give me the family recipe.’ Adelaide patted at her hair as she spoke. It was quite a coup. Sophia didn’t give her recipe to just anyone.

‘Bugger,’ her husband said. ‘Ponting’s out.’

‘On the other hand,’ said Adelaide. ‘I quite like cloves.’ She smiled as they went to the commercial break.

‘Well,’ thought Adelaide when she flicked to page three. ‘Isn’t that a fine piece of journalism.’

‘Listen to this,’ she said to her husband who was yet to have his shower. ‘It says here in The Advertiser that Angeline Jolie is having Brad Pitt’s baby. Well, that is very important news, isn’t it? I can’t think why it’s on page three and not page one.’

‘They probably just made it up,’ Adelaide’s husband said, pulling the cord on his dressing gown just a little bit too tight.

‘Oh, no,’ said Adelaide, ‘they didn’t. They got it off the internet. Apparently, Angeline told a charity worker, who told U.S. magazine People who put it on their website for The Advertiser journalist to find.’

Quoting someone who is quoting someone who is quoting someone. Fine journalism indeed, thought Adelaide.

Adelaide had swum laps in the North Adelaide Aquatic Centre when she was at uni. She was doing a BA, so activity wasn’t really her thing, but sometimes she joined the achievers – physios with ponytails and med students with stethoscopes – just to be sociable. Just to see what balance was all about.

She wouldn’t swim there now of course. It was a disgrace, people said and everyone agreed. Fancy a city like Adelaide with no competition-competent swimming arena. If the airport didn’t kill their reputation that swimming pool certainly would.

At playgroup, Adelaide had heard about the Burnside swimming pool. It was great for toddlers and they served good coffee, so everyone said. But Adelaide would never know for herself. She didn’t have the thighs for that arena.

So Adelaide satisfied herself with the once-closed, now-open Unley Swimming Pool. During the holidays she took the kids and they swam there every day for a week.

They were dreamy, summery days. Until someone stole their kickboards. The ones Adelaide had picked up at the sales. Just left them for a moment she had. In a bag in the carpark while she ducked down to the bakery to get a loaf of bread for lunch. And then she’d come back and they were gone. She probably shouldn’t have left them, Adelaide knew.

Still and all the same. Stealing little kids kickboards! Not very Adelaide, thought Adelaide.

Adelaide had just returned from her walk. She was trying to shed a few kilos and now was as good a time to start as anytime would ever be.

On her return, she had just one thing to say.

“No more *****king agapanthus. Please. They are the ugliest plants in the universe and they are especially ugly when they’re starting to wilt.’

Adelaide was passionate, but she knew no one was listening.

Adelaide was disappointed.

She had blinked over the Christmas break and missed Nick Xenophon’s stint on radio station 5AA. What a pity to miss him, Adelaide thought. He has a lovely voice, Nick Xenophon does.

There was a lot to admire in Mr Xenophon, Adelaide thought. He brought much-needed life and spice to South Australian politics. And even though he was a single issue independent, he often made good contributions to robust political debate.

She was a bit uncomfortable with the idea, nonetheless. A sitting MP with his own radio programme just a few months out from an election? It obviously wasn’t wrong, Adelaide thought. It wasn’t a secret, after all.

But something about it niggled at Adelaide.

Adelaide knew that on 18 March 2006, Mike Rann would win the election.

Except, thought Adelaide, if the summer threw one final hot, hot day on 17 March.

Despite the best official advice that air conditioners should not be used on hot days, everyone would put their air-conditioners on. Electricity usage would peak, half the state would lose its power for hours, freezers would defrost and the final few schnapper from the Christmas trip would be ruined.

In that event, the electorate would punish the ALP at the polls. The state would be plunged back into the un-lawful and dis-orderly days.

Even though it was the Libs who privatised the electricity in the first place and it would never have crossed the ALP’s mind to do such a thing.

The electorate was a fickle beast, and Adelaide was afraid.

Adelaide had been shopping since 28 December 2005, 12.01 am.

She sniffed. It was ridiculous really, not being able to shop before then. No exemptions to the draconian, out-dated shopping rules, not even for The Sales. It was exactly the kind of thing gave this city a Bad Name. Made it a laughing stock right around the world. How could you look cosmopolitan with all your shutters down?

It was one of the few things Adelaide couldn’t discuss with her mother. ‘Who needs to shop late every night of the week?’ her mother asked. ‘Sundays are for families,’ she said. ‘There’s only so much money to go around,’ Adelaide’s mother said. Adelaide’s mother still only had one plastic card. And that was BankCard.

Still, Adelaide thought, the midnight start did make it a littlbe bit special this year. Staying up late. Finding a park. Queuing at the doors of David Jones.

Adelaide’s heart still beat fast when she thought about those first nervous minutes. It was a gamble, a risk, starting at David Jones. Myers had more bargains, but David Jones would always sell out first.

The doors opened, the escalators were on, and Adelaide had shopped. Suitcases she hoped to use. Clothes she would fit into by the time she lost another few kilos. Shoes that would definitely stretch with time. They wouldn’t always be this tight. And anyway, at this price, it didn’t really matter if they never properly fit. They were a Bargain and nothing more needed to be said. She had promised herself an ice cream maker this year, but they were all sold out! And it was only five am! She couldn’t have shopped any faster, she consoled herself.

Adelaide loaded her bags into the car. The boot gleamed with the red sideway checks of David Jones, the Sale signs from Myers, the green of Harris Scarfes.

She closed her eyes and made a mental list of all that she had bought. She added them to the things she had gathered on Christmas Day.

How could it be that her life hadn’t changed? That she still felt hollow inside?

Adelaide shivered as she realised what it was. Just as the sales of 2004/2005 had been spoiled by the events of Boxing Day 2004 (that tsunami really was such a terrible thing), so too had the 2005/2006 sales been spoiled by the events of Boxing Day 2005.

Vale KP. Adelaide wiped at her eyes. Who could believe that Kerry Packer was dead?

What a great Australian. Donated a whole wing of a hospital he had. Adelaide bit at her lips. He was right what he said about taxes. It was better that he minimised what he paid. He knew better than the government where health money should be spent.

And it didn’t stop there. Revitalised cricket, he had. Because he had a deep-seated passion for the game. Even Kim Beazley had good things to say about the lovable old Goanna. And if even the Labor Party, that party of the people, was behind the media mogul man then didn’t that just prove what a great man he really must have been.

Adelaide wiped her eyes again.

The shopping was easier this year of course, Adelaide let herself think. You didn’t have the guilt of spending your money while all those poor people drowned. Adelaide shook her head. No, it was much easier this year. She allowed herself a smile. Kerry Packer was the ultimate bargain hunter after all. He wouldn’t begrudge her time out for a bit of a spending spree. Adelaide didn’t really believe those people who wrote that he had a lot of things, but wasn’t always a happy man. People wrote all sorts of silly things.

Adelaide closed her boot, got into the car, checked behind her, reversed. She turned the radio on, but it was too crackly and she turned it off again.

She was at the bottom of the car park now, putting her pre-paid ticket in the machine and still, the hollow feeling hadn’t left. The tsunami, Kerry Packer’s death. Adelaide shook her head wondering what would spoil the sales next Boxing Day.

Adelaide had a new pastime. Checking the Adelaide Airport Webcam. There was nothing quite looking at the image of nothing happening to make Adelaide feel at home.

It was a pity the airport ever had to open really. It was much more fun with it closed.

Adelaide was a sucker for a good romance. And it was all romance on Shopping for Love.

Adelaide had nearly missed it, so involved was she in her pre-Christmas clean, but she had stopped for The Bachelor (Adelaide was quite worried he was going to fall for the tricks of that raven-haired Trish), and there she was at ten thirty with nothing better to do, and there it was. Shopping for Love.

Adelaide watched.

‘When are you going to bed?’ her husband asked which was typical, he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body, and probably hadn’t even given a thought to her present yet. ‘After this,’ Adelaide said.

She did not notice that he trundled off to bed.

What happens is two contestants get a couple of minutes each to rummage through an eligible single’s flat. Then, in just twenty minutes, the contestants have to spend one thousand dollars on gifts for the eligible single, present the gifts, and the eligible single will choose one of them for a date. How romantic.

Adelaide watched as the first single left her flat, and the contestants got a couple of minutes each to rummage through her flat. They all seem to have flats. ‘It must be set in Sydney,’ Adelaide thought. She took a sip at her tea. She sniffed. She had left it too long, and now it was going cold.

The single sits in a van outside her flat with a computer screen on her lap and watches what the contestants do. Goodness, one of them even sniffed at her knickers when he was looking through her drawers. You couldn’t get much more romantic than that, Adelaide thought. She ate another row of the chocolate she had tried unsuccessfully to hide from herself.

The single in the van laughed as she watched those guys do their thing around her flat. ‘How do they find the people to go on these shows?’ Adelaide wondered. It was something she’d like to do one day. Go on the tele. You know, just for a laugh.

And what a laugh as they race around the Chatswood shops. Look, they’ve even got the Christmas Trees up. Chatswood? Or is it Chadstone? Adelaide had heard the name before. Is that in Sydney or Melbourne? Adelaide wasn’t quite sure. But there was no sign of rain. ‘It must be Sydney,’ Adelaide thought it again.

Adelaide needed a cup of tea to wash the chocolate down. That’s the problem with a television program driven by product placement. It doesn’t have long enough commercials breaks.

When the eligible single chooses her date, the host tells them their compatibility score.

Adelaide smiled as she thought fondly of Dexter and Perfect Match. It had seemed so risque, so cutting edge, so 80s at the time. Adelaide had always wanted to go on Perfect Match. She ate another row of chocolate. She tried not to think too often of the 80s and how things might have been.

This was better than Perfect Match, because you got to see them talk about the date at the end of the show. On Perfect Match you had to wait for weeks, and you didn’t get to see them all.

How did the night end? asked the host.
‘We left the venue at different times,’ the girl said.
‘I think footy trip rules apply,’ said the guy. Then he gave one of those smirks. ‘Yeah, it was a good night.’
‘Well,’ Adelaide thought, ‘he didn’t promise to fall in love with her.’ Still, it was a pity. It sounded like he hadn’t even walked her back to her room. He looked like such a nice boy too.

Will you be seeing each other again? the host asked the other couple. The guy from that other couple was much more attentive it seemed to Adelaide. ‘Yeah. She handled her grog,’ he said.

Shopping for Love was over by eleven and Adelaide went to bed.