Naive Psychologist

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.

Like most people she knew, Adelaide had visitors coming for Christmas. Victoria was coming to stay. Victoria would be two nights with Adelaide and two nights with their mother.

Adelaide’s mother was pleased, but Adelaide stressed about her tiles.

‘She’s coming to see me, not my grout,’ Adelaide said to her husband. She sat on the lounge and pretended to relax. ‘She knows how things how they week before Christmas.’ Adelaide kept her eyes on the television as she spoke. ‘We live in a beautiful house,’ Adelaide said. ‘I wouldn’t live anywhere else.’ Her husband didn’t say anything. He probably nodded, but Adelaide couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the television now. Amy was about to kiss that black guy who helped her out in court.

At ten o’clock, after Judging Amy and repeats of Frasier had finished, she made fizzy pastes of vinegar and bi-carb soda. And Adelaide scrubbed.

Adelaide rang her mother the next morning when Play School was on.

‘I can’t stop and talk,’ her mother said. ‘I did the mince pies last night, but I’ve still got the bathroom to do.’

Her mother pretended not to play favourites, but still Adelaide knew. Deep down her mother preferred Victoria.

Adelaide’s mother never scrubbed for Adelaide. Adelaide liked Victoria, of course she did. She was fun and adventurous and was always stylishly dressed. But two nights would be enough. Victoria could be a little patronising.

Adelaide knew that the Magic Cave promised much more than it delivered.

As a child, Adelaide’s parents – teachers both – brought her to the Rundle Mall every school holidays. Adelaide traipsed behind them, stopping every four steps as her parents bumped into people they hadn’t seen since last term. People like Richard, who had just started his two years country service leave which he had earned by working at a school in a country town he loved. Or Simone who fell in love with the PE teacher, but married that guy who took biology because he didn’t already have a wife.

Adelaide’s parents took her to the Mall, they took her to John Martins. But they didn’t take her to the Magic Cave. Adelaide knew it was there, because girls at school told her about it. They had ridden on Nipper, they said. Patted Nimble’s mane, they had.

Adelaide begged to ride that horse.

One year, one glorious year, her parents did take her to the cave, but she was old enough by then to see that the icicles were made of foam, that the fairy floss was a rip off, and that if Father Christmas were real, he wouldn’t have two doors. One expensive and one cheap.

By the time Adelaide had her own children, the John Martin’s had closed and the Magic Cave had moved. Adelaide was no different to any other mother and she decided to do everything for her children that her parents had never done for her.

Adelaide took her children to the Magic Cave.

A good-looking young boy helped Adelaide’s children on to the merry-go-round and as he waited for the ride to finish he flirted with one of Santa’s elves who giggled and programmed his number into her mobile phone.

While her children rode the merry-go-round, Adelaide heard the whisper. The line to see Santa is an hour and a half long. So Adelaide waited while her children rode Nipper or Nimble. The white one, which is that? She showed them the mirrors which shrunk their legs and stretched their chests. And she pointed at the diaromas where the elf put his face in the porridge again and again and again.

Adelaide tried not to sneer at the dudes in mirror glasses who had followed their girlfriends here after school, because the Magic Cave is so daggy it’s cool.

And when her children had finished looking at the horses and the mirrors and the diaromas because that’s all there was, Adelaide took her children to Myer where it took ten minutes to get to the front of the line.

Ten minutes was much more Adelaide’s style.

Adelaide liked to drive. She drove to town, where she could always find a park. She drove to the football. She drove to the video shop.

Adelaide liked to drive.

Being a sensible girl, Adelaide had a premium membership of the RAA. It was a high school graduation present from her father. ‘You’ll be needing this,’ he said with a wise nod and a knowing twinkle in his eye. And he renewed it every year, along with her comprehensive insurance, until she graduated from university and got a job as Executive Assistant, Stakeholder Relations at the Underwater Weapons Plant. That was only the mid-nineties too, and already they knew what stakeholder relations were all about.

Over the years, Adelaide had reason to be grateful for that premium membership. She was not a bogan, but she drove crap cars. Adelaide identified her geography by the places she had broken down. South Road? Solanoid. Main North Road? Clutch. Burra? Starter motor. But luckily, never the brakes. No, the brakes were always there, ready to be applied.

Adelaide had never truly been out of control.

Even now, even with her successful marriage to a retired footballer turned caryard owner, Adelaide kept that membership up. Because Adelaide was passionate about motorists rights. Society needs someone to speak up against the dreadful pedestrians and the self-righteous bicyclists. ‘When they pay registrations and levys, that’s when they can have rights,’ Adelaide said. Adelaide always nodded when she spoke.

And as for the buses and worst of all, those dreadful trams. Unsightly things they are. And now what do they want to do? Extend them all the way along the King William boulevard. Adelaide shuddered at the thought. Ann Moran was right to make a fuss. And what about the planter boxes Adelaide thought. Only just last week she had driven along King William Street and pointed the boxes out to her mother. ‘The pansies look glorious at this time of the year,’ she said. Her mother had nodded. ‘The red looks very dramatic,’ she had said. Adelaide and her mother always agreed.

So Adelaide was happy when she opened the Sunday Mail on the first very hot day of the year, and saw that finally, the RAA was taking a stance. The tram extension would be expensive, worthless. It was something Adelaide just didn’t need.

‘At last,’ Adelaide thought. ‘Let common sense prevail. A public transport infrastucture? F*k that. A visible transport alternative which links in sensible ways? F*k that. And if what they said on the radio was true, that 21 million they were planning to spend would build a lot of hospitals, keep a lot of schools open and employ a lot of police.

Adelaide cleared her throat, swallowed, took a sip of her freshly-plunged coffee. She smiled lightly to herself, then turned the page of the Sunday Mail.

Adelaide wanted to read what Kevin Naughton had written this week.