17 March 2016, 9 pm
But it is a long train journey, Leeds to Brizzle. I have been away from home since 6 am Tuesday, and I am more than ready to be back there. Even though the kids don’t appreciate me and the cat shows me its bottom, and the broadband is not broad at all and the smell of rotting apples lurks in every gateway. I like it there. I like that there’s room for everyone and a bit to spare, unlike London where there’s room for only half of you but no one’s prepared to be the half that gives up and leaves. Back home, I have a husband. Or at least, I did the last time I looked. He keeps a photo of me, so as not to mistake me for an imposter when I come home late. Now and then, he shows the photo to the children, saying, “This is your mother. If you come across her any time, you are entitled to ask her for pocket money.” Without my husband, I would be an even rubbisher Pee than I am now. He does all the shopping. He assembles the shopping into meal events: there is always a meal event awaiting my return. He organises my dry cleaning, and is now so well known at the dry cleaners that they’re convinced he leads a double life as a crumpled business woman. He chauffeurs the children to, oh, I don’t know, the kinds of places children need to go to – school and stuff. In the mornings he lets the cat in and puts the bins out; in the evenings the reverse. He tops up the Red Bull® supplies. He does a thousand and one jobs and errands to keep the household functioning, nine hundred of which I didn’t even know needed doing. He is, basically, the Everything You Need Pixies. And the best thing is, he does all this with a flatline temperament, which is the perfect foil for a basket-case like me. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t weep. He has underactive panic and flap glands. When he sees me doing these things – shouting, weeping, panicking, flapping – he observes with a kind of benevolent bewilderment, and then gets on with assembling the meal event until I’ve shut up. Without this lovely, kind, patient man, I would be malnourished, ill-laundered and unable to get to London on bin day. My children would be malnourished and uneducated. The cat would have gone to show the neighbours its bottom instead. And CIPA wouldn’t have had half such an exciting year. So right now, on my way back home again at last, I am thinking just how important he is. And also hoping he will help sort my laptop.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |