A trip to the shops with my mother came with an unconventional lesson

I’m in the local corner store with Mum. Fruit, veg, hams, and cans of everything. We’re shopping.

My mother has been trialling a new variant of a familiar gismo. I don’t know if she invented it herself or just upgraded somebody else’s idea, but basically it’s a cardboard box, wrapped in brown paper. On the box is a stamp, an address and string. It’s as though we’re on the way to the post office. The difference is that this particular box has a flap cut out, and my mother’s beautiful fingers can open and close this flap under the knotted string in order to insert anything the shopkeeper might not need.

Larry Blair grew up knowing his mother believed in him and was his biggest supporter (posed by models).Credit: Lightsy / Stocksy United

Mum’s face is radiating pure joy. Joy that she can induct me into a system she’s been perfecting for years, and joy that one day I might carry on the family tradition and follow in her footsteps. For my mother is a virtuoso thief. We are walking the aisles selecting the best ham, pâté and smoked salmon, then secreting it all into the box. She finds this side-splittingly funny, but we’re still on manoeuvres and so her face is cordial, expressionless; a regular shopper’s face.

“Remember,” she always tells me, “the hand is quicker than the eye.”

She chats to anybody who passes, sometimes at length. Nobody guesses a thing, and soon we are sauntering off past the till and out the door, which has a shrill set of bells hanging from it. Outside, during her regular debrief session, she explains the technique in more detail. Never walk fast. Smile at everyone. Make eye contact. Buy something, but not always. Stay for a chat – especially with the staff. And always wear a fresh shirt and spotlessly clean shoes.

My mother has a number of brilliant shoplifting techniques, which I know all about thanks to the many hours spent as her lookout and faithful accomplice. The cardboard box is perfect for the big stuff. Cardigans and other small items of clothing can also be quickly rolled up using a special wrist-flicking technique and stuffed inside.

I knew that she was first and foremost my protector. When I was little, I didn’t know how dangerous the people in our orbit were, but Mum certainly did.

LARRY BLAIR

For the first seven years of my life, it was just Mum and me. I have no memory of ever meeting my biological father and he was certainly never discussed. I don’t remember any other partners who may have been in my mother’s life. So it’s no wonder we were so tight. While our house was always packed with people, at the centre of it all there was just the two of us. There were moments when it felt like we were simply two best friends, accomplices sharing a secret.

But when the chips were down, I knew that she was first and foremost my protector. When I was little, I didn’t know how dangerous the people in our orbit were, but Mum certainly did. And even though it was never discussed, I think she felt guilty bringing me into that world, a world she could neither change nor escape. But it was also a world to which she’d adapted with ease.

This situation, and my lengthy spell as an only child before my sister came along, were probably why I was horribly indulged. I was a revoltingly spoilt boy for as long as I can remember, but even more so after everything went wrong. Mum often took me to lunch at upmarket restaurants, including Doyles in Watsons Bay – the best seafood restaurant in Sydney.

Mum used to say that Sydney rocks were the best oysters in the world, but we both knew she’d never been anywhere else to check, and as things stood, in all likelihood neither of us ever would. We must have made for a curious sight; beautiful Mummah and little old me, living it up on the waterfront like upstanding citizens.

I was in many ways an accidentally but absolutely horrible son, yet she always forgave me. In fact, I have no memories of her ever being genuinely angry with me, no matter what awful things I did. I guess she knew that she had my total devotion and respect and that I’d absorb whatever she said without the need for her to lace the message with acid.

She could also sense that, lurking beneath the layers of insolence, I had a very soft heart and always would. I hope I’m right about all of that because, even though it could have been summed up in a moment, we always seemed to run out of time to exchange the right words.

She could have done so much with her life if she’d wanted, but she chose her own special way. A love of freedom was at the heart of it, and the ferocious determination never to be contained by anybody or anything. In another life, she could have become any kind of superstar. I wonder if she’d already taken the wrong fork in the road before I was born, or whether my arrival had removed all other options.

Most of the time, like everyone else in those days, we had very little money. But there were other times, always fleeting, when it seemed as though we were rich. Regardless, my mother denied me nothing, no matter how good or bad our fortunes were.

In fact, our fortunes had little to do with the gifts she lavished upon me because if we had no cash, she would just steal things or acquire them in other, usually quite ingenious ways. And so I was decked out in magnificent cashmere jumpers and quality silk shirts. Mum was always a stickler for presentation, especially when it came to her only son.

Most of the time, like everyone else in those days, we had very little money. But there were other times when it seemed as though we were rich.

LARRY BLAIR

My first stereo is a good example of how she could laugh at the impossible. One day, she asked me what I thought of a rather nice record player and amp combo in the window of an electrical goods store. It was an absolute beauty, of course. Mum knew all the best brands; it didn’t matter what the product was.

I said I really liked it; it was an enormous pile of business-like brushed metal boxes bristling with inexplicable knobs and switches. And so, she duly went in and had a conversation with the staff. Paperwork was filled out and various forms were produced.

A few days later she took me to a house a few hundred yards away from our own home. Inside this house, there it was: the impressive pile of stereo equipment we’d seen in the shop window. The house was abandoned and Mum and her friends had been using it to get all sorts of fabulous items delivered – without any intention of paying for them.

It was in the middle of being demolished in what was probably the first, completely failed attempt at scrubbing up our suburb. Mum and her sisterhood used this old wreck for quite a while. They’d even put some furniture and a rug in the hall to make people think it was inhabited. As usual, Mum giggled her socks off at this complicated and absurd surprise – almost everything we did had fun as the main ingredient, in those days at least.

Above all else, my mother believed in me and was my biggest supporter, especially when I announced that I wanted to be a professional surfer – before such a career had even been invented. In those days surfers were vagrants, wasters and the people most likely to be taking all the most noxious drugs. The idea that you could be sponsored to surf, that people would come to the beach and watch you compete against each other, or that you might represent anybody or anything people could aspire to, would have seemed like madness to any normal parent.

Yet my mother’s support was outspoken and real, not just when I was a boy but all the way through to the days when I should have known better. In later years, she would never miss an Australian surf competition I was competing in. And she would delight in telling her loyal gaggle of lady friends about my exploits, even asking me to recount various surfing adventures and mishaps for their amusement.

Mum once admitted that the only time she thought I was truly safe was when I was out in the water. It was only then that she didn’t feel she had to worry about me. I’m glad she never made it to Hawaii, which would have changed her mind.

Edited extract from The Outside (Penguin Random House) by Larry Blair and Jeremy Goring is out now.

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