be much more efficient with my household chores if I was going to have any free time. I started to come up with a few ideas.
I was sleeping in a double bed and, as a creature of habit, was still sleeping on my side. This meant half of the sheet wasn’t being used. What if I spent a week sleeping on my side of the bed and then a week sleeping on the other side? That would mean only washing the sheets every two weeks. Mind you it was only me in the bed. What if I slept on each side for two weeks at a time? That would mean I would only need to wash the sheets once a month. Genius! I thought further. What if after the first month I just turned the sheets over and slept on the other side? A whole two months between washes—now we’re talking!
I felt the creative juices start to flow. Using my household equipment meant needing to clean it. I was lucky enough to have a gym at work. What was to stop me from having a shower at work every day rather than at home? My shower at home would then be for weekends only and would probably only need to be cleaned every few months.
Extending the idea of bathrooms—what if I did my ‘business’ at work rather than at home? That would be a significant saving on the most unpleasant job of them all—toilet cleaning. I needed to think long and hard about this. Doing a No.2 in a public loo was one of my greatest fears—a phobia brought on by a combination of disgust and embarrassment. Firstly, I couldn’t bring myself to put my bottom on a seat that some hairy-arsed bloke had recently used (there’s nothing worse than the ‘just vacated’ warmth of a toilet seat). Secondly, I strongly believed that this was a private function and not one to be shared with other men.
I believe my No.2 phobia started when I was at primary school. I remember sitting in class, at ten in the morning, knowing that I had one ‘coming through the gates’ and wondering whether I had the mental and physical strength to hold on until I got home at something like four in the afternoon. This would have been a significant challenge for a grown man, let alone a six-year-old boy.
By the time the last lesson before lunch came around I was starting to feel quite ill. God knows what damage I was doing to my intestines by keeping this thing, or things, inside me. I decided not to eat at lunchtime for fear of ‘topping up’ whatever was in progress. But it was to no avail—I broke down during the first lesson after the break. The force of nature was unstoppable and I filled my shorts. The caretaker was called and, in a moment of absolute humiliation, he carried me, chair and all, to the toilet, from where my mum came to take me home. I couldn’t go to school the next day as I was so ashamed. Fortunately my mum played along and she concocted some story about a mysterious tummy bug, visits to the doctor, best to be on the safe side and so on.
The phobia has been with me for the rest of my life. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of occasions when, in cases of extreme emergency, I have been forced to use a public facility. I have horrible memories of a curry house in London; a train station in Bristol; and a Kenya Airways plane. None of these are places I would have chosen to visit had it not been for some hideous bout of food poisoning. Adopting public No.2 delivery as a labour saving device was therefore going to require a massive dose of mental courage.
Some of my other ideas were a little less earth shattering, such as getting a cleaner to help with the housework. I knew this would be quite an expensive option, so the trick was to use the cleaner as part of an overall cleaning plan, rather than simply leaving all of the cleaning to him or her. My approach was simple. I would look after the downstairs, the girls would look after their rooms and the upstairs, and the cleaner would do two hours every two weeks to look after the bathrooms and give the kitchen a good clean. The girls and I would do the easy bits while the cleaner did the harder bits which I hated doing. This way I would get much better value for money. We were a well-drilled and efficient team and I was effectively only outlaying $25 a week on the cleaner. If I avoided the temptation to drink during the week it pretty much paid for itself and got rid of one of my most hated chores. It was a great trade off.
I also took the big decision not to build my future social life around my weekly trip to Coles. My feelings of social excitement and anticipation were becoming more and more subdued as the weeks went by and I failed to spot, let alone make flirtatious contact with, anyone who looked remotely interesting. At the same time, the inane drudgery of parking, wandering the aisles and packing and unpacking the car was becoming more and more frustrating. Plus, on occasions, I was forced to take a longer checkout queue because of the need to avoid Sharni. All in all, it was a couple of hours of my weekend that I wanted back, and I didn’t have many spare hours.
I didn’t give up on Coles completely because I ventured into the wonderful world of online shopping. This is not just a great labour saving device—you can shop from the comfort of your own office—but it also takes the stress out of weekend shopping. Admittedly, there is quite a lot of work to do to get started, but for a time short single parent it is a fabulous concept. It was quite overwhelming initially—there was so much on the website. There were some fifty-three different types of bread to choose from and another twenty odd types of milk—normal, low fat, no fat, 1L, 2L, 3L etc, etc. And, because I wasn’t an experienced shopper, I didn’t know what I normally bought and, in particular, how much of something I normally bought.
I found a good way forward was to blend online shopping with regular shopping for a few weeks while I developed a feel for what I needed. I kept my shopping receipts and used them to populate my standard online orders. Generally this worked well, although I still made a few volume errors in the early months. I now know 250g of mixed nuts is not very much and that 2kg of chicken is enough to feed a family of ten. On one occasion, due to an unfortunate slip of the mouse, a whole leg of ham was delivered, instead of the 250g of sliced leg ham I thought that I had ordered.
But with experience I became a proficient user. It’s a fantastic way of shopping for basics and getting them delivered to your door—as long as you avoid fruit and vegetables (it’s best to see and choose these yourself, otherwise you can end up with a bunch of skanky veg and bruised fruit). As an added bonus my social interactions with the down-to-earth delivery drivers were always much more pleasant, and embarrassment free, than those with Sharni and her associates.
Over time I developed a routine that worked for me. I made sure I always did the washing and went to the butcher and fruit shop on Saturday morning (when they were open!), did my household chores on Sunday morning and ordered a Coles online delivery for a midweek evening. This broadly left both weekend afternoons for free time. It was the only way that I could survive. I had to have order and routine at the weekends otherwise they would get away from me, I would not have enough ‘me time’ and I would get back to work on Monday feeling terribly frustrated—and I knew that if I stopped performing at work and lost my job then I really would be in trouble.
My routine, with a little bit of refinement, worked well for me over the years and generally ensured I got enough down time. It meant the basics were covered and it gave me time to focus on the really important and difficult challenges—bringing up two teenage daughters.
And anyway the cavalry were arriving; my mum was on her way to Australia.
6
Stiff upper lip
My mum was going to spend some time with me to provide a crash course in running a house, bringing up girls and any other useful skills that might come to mind. But because we English are a strange lot, it nearly didn’t happen, and I would have missed out on a very valuable and personally enriching experience.
I imagine that years ago, when one was on the battlefield standing in one’s bright shiny uniform—the one that made you stand out as a perfect target—facing a pack of charging Zulus, that the stiff upper lip approach to life was very valuable. Far better to stand to attention, unflinching in the face of danger, and take a spear in the guts, than to suffer the indignity of confiding in the soldier standing next to you that you were, in fact, a little bit apprehensive about the forthcoming hoo-ha, or worse, that you were suffering from a slightly runny botty and would much rather be back at home having a nice cup of tea and a scone. After all, there was no need to be afraid because there was the reassuring comfort of the undisputable fact that God was on your side. What could possibly go wrong? The British Empire was built on the stiff