Still no lift. Bugger it, I thought—time for the stairs. Down I ran. I was quite impressed by my ability to keep up a good pace and dodge all of the dawdlers who were making their way both up and down. Did they think I had lost it? Had I lost it? After all, I only needed to get some weekend groceries; it wasn’t a life-threatening event. I would have to do this on a regular basis so I couldn’t continue with the stress of my own version of extreme shopping forever.
Out of the stairwell. Dodged a few people studying lettuces at the market stall and on to Coles. At that moment I knew that, if I hadn’t lost it before, then I had now—officially—lost it. As I saw the neatly lined up shopping trolleys, I was certain that my chances of having a $1 or $2 coin to secure the release of one of their number were slim. I hate this system. We don’t have it in England and I was often caught out and annoyed by it in Australia, even when I was in a good mood. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Does it really stop drunken students from using a trolley to get one of their fallen comrades home after a hard night of active service? I knew that I didn’t have any change and I also knew that I didn’t really have time to go shopping anyway.
I felt tired and useless. The failure to get any shopping suddenly felt like a symbol for my failed life and took on a significance out of all proportion. Standing outside Coles I felt totally alone, and the despair of my situation washed over me. I felt like giving up. I hung my head, took a deep sigh and turned to go back to my car.
As I looked up, the little old lady from the roof top car park passed me, dragging her personal shopping trolley. She smiled at me. It was a sad smile, not like the look I’d received from the previous little old lady with her corgi outside the fruit shop. I smiled back. She knew that I knew, that she knew, that I was a tosser. I imagined that she was a widow, struggling with the recent loss of her husband, the onset of old age and the deterioration of her body. Life was probably hard for her yet she was still smiling, and it looked as though she was coping better than I was. I had to do better. If she could do it then I could do it—thank you, you inspirational little old lady! I went home for a nice cup of tea. I even managed a smile when I was charged a dollar for my five-minute use of the car park.
By the time I had picked up the girls from dance and got back home I was in no mood for a return trip to Coles. Shopping would have to be added to the Sunday list, along with the lawn mowing, cleaning, ironing and potential dog walk. Wasn’t Sunday supposed to be the day of rest?
The girls were hungry and it was now time for dinner, but because of my shopping failures the menu choices were a little limited. I remembered my wife used to knock up a tuna and pasta combination as a meal of last resort when she was back late from the gym or ‘somewhere’. I didn’t really want to think about the gym or the ‘somewhere’ but at least the memory had given me an idea for dinner. I wasn’t sure of the specifics but I reckoned that if I cooked some pasta, opened a tin of tuna and stuck the contents on top, I would be 80 per cent of the way there. Fifteen minutes later it was done. It didn’t look too flash to be fair but, fortunately, I had a creative MasterChef-style brainwave and added some grated cheese to the mix. Although this didn’t do too much for the presentation, at least it added an additional food group to the concoction.
Dinner was served! On the one hand I felt good that I was providing nourishment for my children, but on the other, I recognised that the combination of warm pasta topped with cold tuna and cheese did not make for a great meal. The girls said how much they enjoyed it—bless them. One even went beyond the call of duty and further demonstrated her enjoyment by having a second helping. But the sad truth was that my wife’s meal of last resort had become my Saturday night signature dish. I added cooking to the list of things that I needed to do better.
However, there was a glimmer of good news as far as the evening was concerned. Neither of the girls were going out, instead one of them was having a friend over. This gave me the opportunity to either catch up on some of my chores, or have a glass or two of wine. It had been a hard day so I went for the alcohol option. With the girls happy upstairs, I made myself comfy, poured a generous glass of red and thought back on the day. If I was going to survive I needed to manage my household chores far more efficiently. I realised two things. One, that I hadn’t given my wife enough credit for running the house while she too was working full-time, and the other that I was going to have to earn my leisure time. ‘Me time’ would be a reward for efficiency.
5
Sunday bloody Sunday
Sunday morning. Same start as Saturday, a cup of tea and the paper in bed, but I wasn’t as relaxed as I had been the previous morning, I had more work to do and the clock was ticking. I decided to go to Coles early. A piece of male advice I had been given, and which I thought might be quite positive, was that supermarkets are the new nightclubs for the 40-plus generation, full of lonely, single women and a great place to pick up.
I wondered whether the supermarket world was similar to the nightclub world, although this was a difficult concept for me to analyse fully as I rarely went to the supermarket, and I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been to a nightclub. Did different supermarkets attract a different type of punter? Did Coles have a higher social standing than Safeway, with a more sophisticated clientele? Did location make a difference—would supermarkets nearer the city be more expensive and harder to get into? Were some supermarkets meat markets? Obviously they are all meat markets to a degree, but you know what I’m getting at. Would there be security whose job was to turn away large groups of men, or those people who didn’t have the ‘right look’? Would I need to wear a collar and proper shoes?
A lot to think about over my Sunday morning cornflakes. I wasn’t really looking to pick up but, on the basis that my local Coles might become my new local wine bar and first impressions could be important, I thought I should at least make an effort on my initial visit. I went for a pair of jeans and a relatively trendy shirt, a sort of ‘happening’ single dad look.
I was slightly apprehensive as I went through the doors to Coles. I was nervous about all the new people that I was about to meet and wondered whether, in an hour or two, I would be sharing a flat white with my new, fabulously exciting, friends. Given the build up to my trip, and the agonising over which shirt gave me the best enigmatic and interesting, yet available, look, it was a bit disappointing to realise that, in reality, Coles at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning is actually just a supermarket.
It has to be said that there were quite a lot of 40-plus singles in the house, but they were mostly fairly sad looking blokes. Even in the early days of my new life I could easily recognise the single men. Their trolleys were a giveaway—baked beans, cupa-soups, frozen chips, frozen pies, ready meals (single serve) and so on—all the hallmarks of a solitary life. It occurred to me that the reason sales of Lean Cuisine meals have risen so dramatically recently is not because women are buying them as part of a calorie controlled diet, but because you can chuck them in the microwave. They have become a key part of the single man’s diet and volumes are up because men need to eat three of them at a time to feel full.
There were also a few women in the store but they didn’t appear to be treating their shopping trip as a pseudo nightclub experience. In fact it was the complete opposite. The women had generally adopted a grim faced, determined look as though the trip to Coles was a necessary evil and they were attempting to break their individual course record for a weekly shop. They were dressed for it too. A tracksuit is clearly the fashion choice of the efficient female shopper. There was no interaction, no flirty looks, no sexual tension—the only occasional moments of excitement and whispered gasps seemed to be caused by the discovery of a new weekly special.
After spending thirty minutes taking in the Coles vibe and concluding that this would not form a key plank of my future social life, I realised, rather disappointingly, that my trolley only contained some milk and a small packet of cheese slices. My lack of progress was due to a combination of factors—partly
