Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance, page 1
Photo by Darren James
Kate Solly is a writer, a mother of six and really quite good at getting the bubbles out of plastic book wrap. While most of her time is spent finding lost shoes and investigating what’s making the car smell bad, Kate frequently escapes to write entertaining things. She has penned many articles, columns and reviews for various publications, but when she is not writing, she enjoys starting crochet projects and never finishing them.
For my grandmother, Aileen Patricia Moriarty.
Ma Ma, you believed in me long before I ever did.
I am grateful for all of the years you were part of my life.
First published by Affirm Press in 2023
Boon Wurrung Country
28 Thistlethwaite Street
South Melbourne VIC 3205
affirmpress.com.au
Text copyright © Kate Solly, 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 9781922848369 (paperback)
Cover design by Louisa Maggio © Affirm Press
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by J&M Typesetting
CHAPTER ONE
Claire tried her best in the supermarket, she really did. The trick, when shopping with two babies and a toddler, was to power quickly through the ‘red zones’ of lollies and chips, to distract as much as possible and to never double back. The only way was forward, ever forward. But even if you followed all of the rules, even if you completely bypassed the centre aisle of lawnmowers and guitar cases, things could go wrong quickly. So it was that she found herself at the checkout queue with an overloaded trolley and an overloaded brain.
Harry was on the floor. He wanted evwerything that was on the shelves by the checkout, from the breath mints and lollipops to the AA batteries and beef jerky. When she refused to accommodate these demands, he laid himself out prostrate, protesting the violation of his human rights. Claire did her best to ignore this demonstration and set to work unloading the trolley onto the conveyor belt. Lily, meanwhile, had reached behind her seat to discover a carton of eggs in the trolley, and had set to work unloading these onto the floor.
As other customers joined the queue behind her with mere armfuls of groceries, Claire waved them ahead, and they stepped around Harry, and the eggs, to make their purchases. After she had cleared out the entire trolley and had waved the fifth customer ahead of her, she scooped up Harry, took him through the checkout and placed him on the floor under the packing bench.
‘You can finish having your tantrum here, darling,’ she said.
A new customer had joined the queue behind her when she returned. He raised his eyebrows. Claire knew he was hoping she’d let him ahead of her, but she couldn’t – she just couldn’t. Studiously avoiding his eyes, she steered her trolley to its position at the end of the register and prepared for the onslaught of packages.
Spaghetti. Butter. Tinned tomatoes. Ice-cream. She grabbed the items as they shot through and attempted to fit them back in the trolley. Apples. Cornflakes. Toilet cleaner. Chocolate. Just ignore Customer Man with his sighs and disapproval. Nappies. Coffee. Milk. Wool wash. By this point, Hope was over it. She wriggled her legs up into the trolley seat and attempted to stand. ‘Out!’ she said. Celery. Brown sugar. Tuna. Frozen peas. Claire worked with her left hand as her right tugged Hope’s foot back into place and held it there. Hope began to cry. Lily paused briefly in her egg tossing to cast a disdainful look at her noisy twin beside her. Beef mince. Baking paper. Bananas. Oil. Harry had grown tired of his tantrum and came over to inspect the commotion. ‘Why is Hope crying, Mummy?’ Toothpaste. Raisin toast. Tissues. Bread. ‘You’re hurting her, Mummy. STOP HURTING YOUR DAUGHTER, MUMMY!’ Lettuce. Teabags. Depleted eggs.
Claire fit the last of the groceries into her precariously packed trolley. Time to pay.
Except that her handbag was nowhere. Nowhere.
‘I, um, appear to be missing my handbag,’ she stammered. ‘Might I go back and see if I put it down somewhere in the store?’
Register Man nodded blandly.
‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ huffed Customer Man to no one in particular. Then he stepped in the eggs.
Awake. As soon as Yasmin realised, before she reached full consciousness, her hand was scrabbling down the side of the bed, grasping for the cardboard box. Quick, quick. Her eyes still closed, she shoved the flaky cracker into her mouth and forced herself to chew. Salt and starch. She swallowed and opened her eyes. Okay. Slowly, she sat up and cautiously ate a few more dry biscuits. Okay.
She got up, stumbled through her wudhu and managed to complete Fajr prayer. A little absently, it must be said, but still better than the half-asleep fumbling that had passed for morning prayer in the past few weeks. And she was definitely on time. Things were starting to get better.
She munched another dry biscuit as she dressed after her shower. The nausea was there, but it was in the background. Good. Better. Clean teeth. Makeup. Hijab.
Watching her reflection in the mirror, she fastened the soft, brown georgette fabric under her chin with a pair of rose-gold magnets. Oh, how she loved her magnet clips. They were a miraculous design, a no-snag, game-changing feat of engineering. She swept one end of her headscarf behind her head and made another fastening, folding the fabric so that the magnets remained invisible. Good. Breakfast.
She didn’t really want to eat anything, but she made herself some tea and toast. She didn’t even butter the toast, but it would do. It was something. She thumb-scrolled idly through her socials. So many ads for crochet patterns, yarn, craft supplies. That’s what happens – you buy one pattern online, just one pattern, one time, and that’s all it takes: you will be bombarded with ads for the remainder of your natural life. Still, it was a break from the bizarre fifty-shades-of-werewolf ads that kept popping up in her feed.
A print-out of the digital download in question, the patient zero that had sparked the epidemic of crochet-themed banner ads, was sitting in a plastic pocket in a bag on the kitchen bench. Yasmin glanced across at the bag. It looked innocent enough. A shopping bag from the local yarn shop, also containing high-quality yarn and a new, soft-grip hook. She had even found a card of ancient pearly yellow buttons in her mum’s button tin and stowed them in the bag too. It was all ready to go. Yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to cast the first stitch. Her eyes lingered on the bag as she nibbled her toast.
The pattern she’d bought was a vintage one. Classic without being dated or fussy. Yasmin knew that the rich, warm tones of the yarn she’d chosen would give it a modern twist. She needed to get started. She would get started. It was just that—
The front door opened with a clatter and Omar walked in. He called out a greeting and tossed his gym bag into the laundry. As he disappeared to shower, Yasmin got up and flipped on the coffee machine.
The flier was all typed up, formatted and ready to be printed. Meredith had put her skills to good use. The promotion was clear and easy to read. The graphics were eye-catching and visually appealing.
Her work day had not yet started, even though she was in her office. It was permissible to work on personal projects outside of work hours. While, technically, she was using office resources (the computer, the word-processing software, the electricity required to power her computer), Meredith felt confident that she had not committed an offence. The impact on the company was almost negligible and could perhaps be considered part of the ‘fringe benefits’ of her role as director of marketing at Rivergum Estate. She drew the line at printing and photocopying though. Using the printer or photocopier for personal items was theft, pure and simple.
Meredith liked rules. She enjoyed learning new rules. Road rules, company policies, codes of conduct, rules of etiquette. Meredith pored over these the way another person might devour a good novel. Following clear rules made Meredith feel happy. And the rules had to be clear. They had to be straightforward. ‘Grey area’, ‘wiggle room’, ‘white lie’. Meredith abhorred these terms. How could a lie be ‘white’? What did that even mean? Surely ‘honest’ and ‘dishonest’ were a strict binary, otherwise what was the point? As soon as there were exceptions, the concept lost all meaning.
Meredith also enjoyed reminding others of the rules when they forgot. She considered herself a bit of an expert. It was her duty to share her knowledge.
Two panicked laps of the store yielded no results. Claire had needed to pull Lily and Hope out of the trolley, which she had abandoned at the register, and the two toddlers were greatly enjoying their newfound freedom, grabbing packages to show each other and clambering into the shelves to sit on a throne of paper towels. The handbag was nowhere.
She returned to the checkout, where Register Man was in the zone, scanning at breakneck speed. ‘I couldn’t find it,’ Claire said. ‘I’m going to check the car.’
Register Man gave a tiny blink of acknowledgement, his scanning never wavering.
As she trudged towards the carpark, it hit her. Of course! The toilet door! The hook!
When they’d first arrived at the supermarket, Harry had taken one look at the man/lady toilet sign and made his announcement.
‘I need to go to the toilet!’
Going out with a child who is toilet training was kind of like carrying around a grenade with the pin drawn. That thing could go off at any time. You needed to have your wits abou
After manoeuvring the trolley into the ladies’ toilets, Claire had pushed up her sleeves, slung her handbag on the hook on the back of the door and hoisted Harry onto the toilet seat. Then she stood, slightly crouched, ready for anything. It was a false alarm. Harry, it turned out, didn’t need to go to the toilet after all. He was fast becoming a connoisseur of public toilets, and the restrooms beside Aldi were a set he had not yet sampled.
She rushed back to the bathrooms now, smiling. She had definitely left her handbag on the back of the toilet door.
Except, it turned out, the handbag was definitely no longer there. Claire stared blankly at the unencumbered hook as Harry, Lily and Hope investigated the hand-dryer situation. Her mind raced. Perhaps some kindly stranger had handed it in? Or perhaps some lady with a gambling problem had seen it as an answer to her prayers? The toilet was next door to a TAB after all. Perhaps a woman was plonking the handbag on the counter this very minute, saying, ‘Put it all on horse number twelve.’
Claire’s heart started thumping. Lily started crying. What was she going to do?
Omar was chatting about the receptionist at his practice as he prepared his coffee and made toast. He’d spoken about Brenda before. Middle-aged and formidable, she had been working at the practice for longer than any of the GPs.
‘I mean, if it was just that she was snarky to the doctors and the other receptionist, I wouldn’t mind so much. What gets me is when she’s rude to the patients. She treats patients like they’ve just turned up to ruin her day. And nobody’s brave enough to talk to her about it.’
Yasmin was still looking at the bag of yarn with the pattern and hook. She needed to do this. She had everything she needed. So why couldn’t she get started? She blinked and looked at her husband. ‘Perhaps she is doing the people of Copeton a favour? People will be too scared to get sick. They don’t want to deal with her.’
‘It’s more likely …’ Omar was slapping Vegemite on his toast in thick brown stripes, ‘it is more likely that people will avoid going to the doctor when they need to and their condition will get worse as a result.’
Yasmin wrinkled her nose. ‘How can you eat that? That’s far too thick!’
Omar proffered the toast with a grin. ‘Salty goodness!’
It’s not like she didn’t know the stitches. Chain stitch, double crochet, treble crochet, slip stitch. In her mind, she still used the Urdu terms even though she never spoke Urdu anymore – she wasn’t even sure she still could. It was always English. Even her dad spoke only English now. ‘If you were to say something to her – the doctors are the ones in charge, she’d have to listen to you.’
Omar laughed. ‘No. Doctors don’t know anything, apparently. She considers us inferior. Or perhaps it’s just brown doctors. It’s like she doesn’t trust my medical training. I’m like, dude, I went to Monash. But so what if I did train overseas? There are excellent universities all over the Middle East. Top class. I just wouldn’t go there because I am from Australia. Anyway …’ He screwed the lid onto his coffee mug, gathered up his toast and bag and, after planting a kiss on Yasmin’s mouth, he was out the door.
Yasmin finished her tea and began gathering her things for work. She cast one last look at the bag of yarn. The bag of yarn gazed reproachfully back at her.
Tomorrow, she thought.
Claire asked at the gift shop and the post office. She even ventured into the TAB. Nobody had turned in a handbag. ‘Go check Centre Management,’ suggested the $2-shop man.
Centre Management, it turned out, was at the opposite end of the shopping centre. By now, she had commandeered an empty trolley and put Harry, Lily and Hope into the body of it. She trudged on, pushing the trolley ahead of her and keeping her eyes forward to avoid meeting any disapproving glares.
As she pushed her unwieldy load ever onwards towards her distant goal, Claire thought. Her handbag. Her handbag with her wallet. She was going to be late for school pickup. She couldn’t call the school to let them know. Her phone was in her handbag. Her phone … and her KEYS! Her keys were in her handbag! She was stranded here with no keys and no phone and no wallet and no lovely red handbag with the pretty striped lining.
It was a very white-faced Claire who sidled into the Centre Management office with her cartload of offspring. She rang the bell and waited.
A woman in a navy blazer appeared. ‘Can I help you?’
Claire’s lip wobbled ever so slightly. ‘I’ve lost my handbag.’
The woman smiled. ‘Can you describe it for me?’
‘It’s, um, red, and—’
‘Here it is!’ The lady jubilantly produced the handbag. Claire had to stop herself from throwing herself at the woman’s feet and kissing her pointy red shoes.
Claire drove her baby-laden trolley straight to the car and drove her car straight to the school. Ben and Piper were waiting at the school office. Claire gave the school secretary a strained smile. Then she rushed everyone back to the car, they all drove back to the shopping centre, all got out of the car and all traipsed into the supermarket.
Register Man was still there, swiping and bleeping for all he was worth.
She approached him. ‘I found it!’ she exclaimed. ‘My handbag, I mean. I found my handbag. I can pay for my groceries now. Where’s my trolley?’ She pulled out her wallet.
Register Man looked uncomfortable. ‘We didn’t think you were coming back,’ he said. ‘All of the stock is back on the shelves.’
Claire stared bleakly at the labyrinth of aisles and queues and half-price specials. She couldn’t go back – she just couldn’t.
‘Mummy,’ said Harry, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’
The office supplies shop had its usual lunchtime crowd, but the queue moved quickly enough. Meredith sat in her car and looked over the stack of printed fliers, warm in her hands. She had spent a little extra on colour printing, but there was room in her budget – she’d checked. Meredith was on track with all of her goals this year.
She tried to set goals in every area of her life. There was her Career, of course, but there were also Fitness, Finance, Education, Social and Entertainment/Hobbies. This endeavour would cover both Social and Entertainment/Hobbies. She had put so much planning in, she was sure to nail it. She already knew the format for the first six meetings as well as location, logistics, supplies. That was how she operated. That was why she was so successful, even though she was still young.
She didn’t put her name on the flier, and the phone number she supplied was not her work number (using a work phone for personal reasons would be a breach of company policy). She didn’t want anyone to know about this. She didn’t want anyone to know about this until she was ready.
Meredith carefully stowed the fliers in her plastic document wallet and placed it on the passenger seat of her car. When she picked up her lunch box, it was still cool from a morning spent in the office fridge.
Vegemite and lettuce sandwich with a yoghurt that was supposed to promote bowel regularity. Of course, she probably wouldn’t need the bowel-stimulating yoghurt if she made her sandwich on brown bread, but she’d never liked brown bread. She had only ever wanted white bread. Plus, it gave her lunch a pleasing aesthetic. A sort of minimalism. White sandwich, white yoghurt, white boiled egg. It would be nicer if her yoghurt spoon were also white. Tomorrow maybe. Her lunch box was teal green, but that was right. A white lunch box would be too much. Teal was the perfect backdrop to set off the white tableau. She ate it slowly in her car in the Officeworks carpark. Meredith did not enjoy lunch-room banter.
She was early. For the first time that week, Yasmin had actually arrived at work early.
It felt good to unzip the jade-green book protector and pull out her hardcover bullet journal and black-ink pen. She had neglected this for too long. She flipped past the pages with random notes, meal plans, prayer intentions and lists of books she planned to read. Time to get her swirling thoughts out of her head and onto the page.
In the top left corner, she wrote the tasks she needed to get done (‘Treasury report’, ‘Stage three proposal’, ‘Tuesday meeting notes’). In the top right, she wrote a list of the people she needed to contact (‘Skype Meesha’, ‘Email Mum’, ‘Text Marion’, ‘Call plumber’). In the bottom left, she wrote a shopping list (‘milk, bleach, dry biscuits, BIN LINERS!’). In the bottom right, she wrote errands and appointments (‘Op shop run’, ‘Cake for Qur’an group’, ‘Meal for Dad’, ‘Baby doc 5.30pm’). When everything was written down, Yasmin sat back and surveyed her work. Her entire life, reduced to neat black dot-points. It was very satisfying.
