BANK HOLIDAY’S

My kids are back. It took precisely ten minutes before I wished they would go away again. I now have three loads of washing to do, one load includes a 10 minute search for a squashed easter egg in a trouser pocket and I can’t go up or down the stairs without preparing to lose my life.

Bank holidays at home are a nightmare when you don’t have a man around. Admittedly, I used to feel resentful that my husband chose to do boring things around the house on his day off, rather than attend to my every need, but now, the garden positively shouts to be attended to, the shed needs re-sorting and the Christmas tree needs to be taken to the dump. There are plenty of things I have managed to get my head around post separation (sort of) – mortgages, endowment policies, council tax, buying beer, but for some reason I am incapable of loading up my car and going to the dump. I am not into stereotypical divisions of labour generally, but going to the dump is most definitely a man’s job. So is mowing the lawn. When we were living together in the family house, my husband hated mowing the lawn. It was bizarre though, as our relationship deteriorated, the more he mowed the lawn. The greater the level of emotional stress, the more time he spent on getting each line straight, honing the skinhead look. At the time I thought it was because he felt that if he couldn’t control the emotions within the house, he was at least in charge of something in the near vicinity. However, it is far more likely that it was simply an avoidance tactic.

I wonder if I will get away with spraying my dead Christmas tree silver and using it this year in order to avoid taking it to the dump.