importantly, the fact that I didn’t have a list and therefore didn’t know what I needed to buy. But I did need to get going so, to speed things up, I took what I considered to be a fairly practical route and, starting at the first aisle, went through the whole store putting in two of every item I thought I might need for my new life, a sort of Noah’s ark approach to shopping.
It’s amazing what you can buy in a supermarket. There is so much more to it than just food—cleaning products, batteries, insect repellent, printer cartridges, Christmas crackers on special, Easter eggs on special, Halloween gear on special. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store and within an hour I had a fully loaded trolley. It was a bit of a shock at the checkout.
“That will be $408.57,” said Sharni.
“Oh okay.” Bloody hell—was that a lot? Still, I reckoned I had a month’s supply of food in my trolley.
“Have a relaxing afternoon,” she said, in what I thought was a slightly ambiguous way.
Was she suggesting something else? I hesitated as I pretended to study my receipt, playing for time. What was the etiquette here? Was there more to come? Was she expecting me to make a move?
“You need to move your stuff,” she barked.
“Oh okay. Sorry.”
I guess I was wrong. And anyway, why would a nineteen-year-old check-out chick be interested in a middle aged bloke who couldn’t even get his groceries into his trolley efficiently? I saw her eyes roll as she greeted the next customer. I couldn’t leave quickly enough.
I got home feeling good about my newly successful hunter-gatherer role. The floor was strewn with my shopping. The girls came down—hyenas around the kill—and started going through the bags.
“Did you get any BBQ shapes?” What are they? I thought.
“We need cheese slices for school lunches.”
“And avocado.”
“And snacks for play lunch.”
It was becoming a long list of forgotten items.
“What’s for dinner tonight?”
I wasn’t sure. I had bought stuff, rather than ingredients to make up a meal.
There were a few other issues. It turned out that I had lots of cleaning products already; the bin liners were too small for the bin; I had bought so much fresh food that the ham, yoghurts, vegetables and other disposables wouldn’t fit in the fridge (maybe I could stir fry them for dinner?); I had added to the already generous supply of ‘spag bol’ sauce; and I had completely forgotten to buy any chicken.
I realised rather sadly that, despite filling the trolley and spending over $400 on what I thought would be a month’s supply of food, I would be going back to Coles again in the next couple of days.
To make matters worse it was lunchtime already. Another morning had passed. I decided to have a more typical Sunday afternoon and focus on the things I knew I could do well, a sort of confidence booster. I mowed the lawn and watched some rugby.
At 9.30 that evening, with the ironing done and the girls in bed, I slumped on the sofa. I momentarily had a feeling of victory, the feeling I used to have at the end of the occasional weekend when my wife had been away and I had looked after the children and the house. I would feel tired, but satisfied that all required tasks had been completed, no one had been injured and the house was neat and tidy. But this time the moment of victory was fleeting. This was not the end—this was just the beginning. I would have to do this all again next weekend, and the next one, and the next one after that. In fact I would need to do this every weekend as well as cook for and look after the girls during the week. I was knackered and just to finish the weekend off nicely it was a workday tomorrow. I needed a day off already.
I had an early night. I already knew that I needed to 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
