fiction | Maggie Joel

EXCEPT FOR VIEWERS
IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

ON SATURDAY NIGHT we watched the second part of Joan of Arc on Channel Seven. It was a two-part mini-series and everyone had missed the first part last Saturday because the Eagles were playing Essendon but tonight the footy wasn’t on till late so we watched Joan of Arc.
OOIt was about a French girl who defied the English invaders so they accused her of being a witch but really it was an American program so all the actors were American except the girl who played Joan who was English. At the end Joan was burned at the stake. We watched as the English soldiers set fire to the stake with burning torches and the flames licked at Joan’s feet and on the lounge, Nanna dabbed a handkerchief to her eyes. As the smoke billowed upwards and the flames began to burn her, Joan turned her eyes towards heaven in one final, hopeless look of despair and then that week’s lotto numbers scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen.
OO“Quick gedda pen!” screamed Mum, leaping up and fumbling for the TV guide so’s she could scribble down the numbers on it. Julie, my sister, scrambled around beneath the video where a store of pens and pencils is always kept so that you could write on the video label what you had taped (too many Tuesday night Bill episodes had been taped over with Thursday night’s ER). She came up triumphantly with a pen that had Quit For Life written on its side and Mum grabbed it and scribbled down the numbers, half across Sophie Lee’s face which was on the front cover of the guide.
OO“But you didn’t buy a lotto ticket this week,” said Dad, not taking his eyes off the burning Joan. (And she was well aflame by now, the lotto numbers notwithstanding.)
OONanna sniffed discreetly.
OO“Jus’ cause I didn’t buy a ticket doesn’t mean I don’t still need to get the numbers down,” explained Mum. “How’m I going to guess the numbers next week if I don’t know which ones come up this week?”
OODad didn’t answer.
OO“Such a shame,” said Nanna. “She was just a girl, really. Too young to die.”
OO“Nan, it’s just a TV show,” said Dad, not looking at her.
OO“That’s not what I meant,” said Nanna, dismissing the still smouldering Saint Joan. “I was thinking of that poor girl in the paper, the one that got chosen to do the lotto numbers.”
OO“Oh,” said Dad.
OONanna meant the girl from Beaconsfield who’d been picked from a field of hundreds to be the new TV lotto girl and then she’d been knocked down by a ute at the lights on Warwick Road the very next day. It was in the West Australian that week. She’d only been 19 and her mum had said, all she ever wanted was to be the lotto girl on telly. So the girl who had come second got the job instead. Her name was Trina.
OO“Well, I wouldn’t have won,” said Mum, studying the numbers she’d written down. “87 not 86, and 72 not 73. I always picks youse kids’ birthdays.”
OO“I wasn’t born in ’86, I was born in ’85,” said Julie disgustedly.
OO“And who the hell was born in 1973?” said Dad, looking at Mum like she’d gone mad.
OO“Not 1973. Number 73. Our house.”
OO“We live at 37,” said Julie.
OO“And 37 backwards is 73,” I said and everyone looked at me. I turned back to the telly where a retired footballer was advertising health insurance.
OO“Right, wind the tape back. Let’s watch Sex and the City,” said Mum, putting away the lotto numbers, and Dad groaned because he hates Sex and the City. He hates all those programs where they have a narrator telling you what’s happening in a voice-over. He says it’s pretentious crap and American shows all do it nowadays because it’s trendy, and Julie said, well they do it in Secret Life of Us and that’s not American, and Dad said, well there you go, then.
OOI reckon those shows have a voice-over narrator because they don’t know how to tell you what someone’s thinking. Mum says Dad doesn’t like Sex and the City because it’s about women who have brains and careers and are independent. Dad says Mum only likes it because it’s about girls who shop and have sex.
OOThe Sex and the City tape was from the TO BE RE-USED pile which was right beside the video and was not to be confused with the DO NOT ERASE! pile. Mum started the DO NOT ERASE! pile after Julie taped over the episode of ER when George Clooney left the show with an episode of Buffy. The DO NOT ERASE! pile has Princess Diana’s funeral, the ’94 Grand Final, the final episode of Seinfeld, Cathy Freeman winning her gold medal and the Queen Mother’s funeral too. They didn’t show Princess Margaret’s funeral on TV, which is sad, Nanna said, because it doesn’t happen often, a Royal Funeral, and it’s a shame if they don’t even show it on the telly.
OOAfter the credits the ads came on—a policeman’s head and shoulders and Dad pressed fast-forward but you knew what he was saying: “If you’re caught going 16 kilometres over the speed limit you’ll lose 16 points. That’s half your license in one go. SPEED KILLS.” Then there was an ad for a new-model sports car showing a sleek, tinted-windows silver car skimming down the centre of a winding Alpine road on two wheels. You couldn’t see the driver, just two black-gloved hands gripping the steering wheel. Don’t get left behind! said the caption.
OOBefore we’d even got ten minutes into Sex and the City, Dad said it’s time for the footy, even though the Eagles had probably lost already. He gets annoyed when we have to watch the footy on a delayed broadcast two hours after the eastern states. He says it’s discrimination against people who live in WA.
OOMum said if you want to whinge why don’t you ring up the TV station and whinge to them? but Dad said, what’s the point? The TV people all live in the eastern states, they probably think Busselton’s something an Edwardian lady wore under her skirts. So we watched the footy ‘live’ from the MCG.
OOWhen it was quarter time and the Eagles were already three goals behind to St Kilda, Dad surfed through all the channels. There was an ad for next week’s A Current Affair. “Are we a nation of fatties?” asked Mike Munro, then there was an ad for McDonald’s and Dad said let’s open that packet of corn chips in the cupboard. Then there was a news update and the newsreader said “Police warn of hand-gun epidemic!” and there was a shot of three youths in a street being searched by the cops then a shot of a policeman holding out a hand gun to show the camera as if he were saying, See, told you so! Then there was a preview for Lethal Weapon III and Mel Gibson blasted his way out of a flaming building with a small machine gun.
OO“They’ve got all three Lethal Weapon movies on DVD at Blockbuster Video,” said Julie. “We oughta get a DVD player, Dad.”
OODad flicked back to the football. Before long the Eagles were five goals behind and Mum went to the kitchen to get the corn chips.
OO“Me and Craig had free tickets to last week’s game,” said Julie, nodding towards the TV. “Craig’s Dad’s company sponsors the umpire’s shoes.”
OOCraig was Julie’s sometime boyfriend.
OO“Why didn’t you go then, instead of watching it on the telly?” said Dad.
OOLast week we had all sat and watched the Eagles lose by fifty points to Essendon.
OO“Course she didn’t go, they lost!” said Nanna, who had recovered by now from the shock of the lotto girl’s untimely death.
OODad stared at Nanna, mystified.
OO“But she wasn’t to know they’d lose before the game started, was she?”
OO“It would have started two hours earlier in the eastern states,” said Nanna.
OODad shook his head.
OO“Cheese or nachos?” called Mum from the kitchen.
OOEveryone sat and watched the footy except Mum who was pouring the corn chips into a bowl in the kitchen. The Eagles scored a behind.
OO“What sort of company sponsors the umpire’s shoes?” said Dad to no-one in particular.
OO“Carol—me and your Auntie Chris were thinking of going over to Rotto this weekend,” said Nanna, aiming this remark at Mum who was still in the kitchen. “We haven’t been for years and it’s such a lovely ferry ride.”
OO“That’s nice, Mum,” said Mum, pulling a bottle of Coke out of the fridge. She unscrewed the lid and it gave a feeble hiss and all the bubbles dissolved.
OO“Only we saw the travel show was going to do Rotto this week so we thought we’d watch it on the telly instead. That Ernie Dingo always knows the best places to go.”
OO“A shoe manufacturer would,” said Julie. “Sponsor the umpire’s shoes.”
OO“Oh, is that what Craig’s Dad’s company does?” said Nanna, who was partial to shoes and had once spent a whole day in the new Shoez Warehouse in Joondalup.
OO“No, he manages a Toyota dealership in Bassendean.”
OO“Did someone leave the lid off the Coke?” called Mum from the kitchen. “It’s gone flat.”
OOAt half time, Dad flicked through Nine, Seven, the ABC and SBS then back to the ABC, Seven then Nine. We saw a car chase, a girl washing her hair in the shower, a kidney being sliced open, Real Madrid hitting the goalpost, a kidney being sewn up, a girl drying her hair and a car crashing.
OO“Did you leave the lid off the Coke?” said Mum coming in and standing over me, accusingly.
OOI don’t even drink Coke.
OO“Stop! Stop on that one!” cried Nanna to Dad, waving her handkerchief at the TV where a young couple now stood, arm-in-arm, in the hallway of their house. “It’s that show where they move into someone’s house and renovate it and then they sell the house for thousands of dollars more than they were expecting,” said Nan. “It’s so exciting when you watch their faces during the auction and the price keeps going up and up!”
OO“Wish someone’d renovate our house,” called Mum who was back in the kitchen and Dad sank lower in his chair because he had started replastering the ceiling before the first game of the season and now the Eagles had failed to make the play-offs and it still wasn’t finished.
On the telly, the young couple (Steve and Belinda from Bondi) stood nervously in their kitchen as the auction went on outside in the street.
OO“Steve and Belinda wait nervously in their kitchen whilst the auction continues outside,” explained the presenter. Then there was a commercial break and an ad came on for the Salvos’ campaign to help the homeless and there was a black-and-white shot of a small girl with stringy hair and a bald teddy bear staring at us, homelessly. Then it was back to the auction. The price went up to $760,000.
OO“$760,000!” exclaimed Nanna. It was now between just two buyers and Steve and Belinda held their breath.
OO“Last time of asking,” said the auctioneer for the third time. “All gone. All said . . . Sold!” and in the kitchen Steve and Belinda hugged and Belinda burst into tears and Steve called someone on his mobile.
OO“How much did it go for in the end?” said Nanna but no-one could remember.
OOThe Eagles came back strongly in the third quarter but then they lost by four goals and Dad said, wish they’d burned St Kilda at the stake rather than St Joan and Nanna said, that was because St Joan was French whereas St Kilda was in Melbourne.
OOAfter the footy there was an ad on the ABC for a new show called Feedback where you could ring up and complain about what you don’t like on TV.
OO“There you go,” said Mum, nodding at the TV. “Now’s your chance. Go on, ring ’em up.”
OOThe ad said, “Join our live internet discussion. Except for viewers in Western Australia,” and Dad said, “Ha!” and turned off the telly in disgust.
OO“Well, you should have rung up two hours ago,” said Nanna, primly.
OO“And how’m I supposed to know they’re going to be showing this ad in two hours’ time?” said Dad.
OO“It’s always a two-hour delay,” explained Nanna, and Julie said, “Not in summertime. In summertime it’s three hours.” I said, “Why don’t we ring up someone in the eastern states and ask them to watch the lotto results on the telly then we’ve got two hours to go out and buy a ticket and pick the winning numbers.”
OO“We don’t know anyone back east,” said Nanna, and Mum said, let’s watch the rest of Sex and the City so we did.

Overland 179–winter 2005, pp.38–41