TIME TO TIDY

The Father of the Children is not pleased, I’m not sure why. To be honest I feel it’s best not to ask, just hope that whatever is causing his disgruntlement will go away and we can all go back to normal. I think some of it might be to do with the staggering amount of small children there seemed to be in our house over the weekend.

In the past I have said that it is so important for the children to love being at home, to feel they can always bring their friends back. What I didn’t intend was for our house to turn into a drop-in centre for the under 11’s. One mate each for the afternoon means a total of six, I’m used to that, but I counted the heads as I passed from room to room and I reached eleven, and heaven knows there could have been more hiding in cupboards.

Locally all children have adopted the custom of abandoning their shoes by the front door. At the weekend, with all these visitors, our small hallway looked like the entrance to one of the larger London mosques. The Father of the Children stomped in, tripped over the shoes and swore. I remained silent, thinking…well, if you won’t look where you’re going. I wanted to point out that there isn’t some unwritten rule in our domestic contract that I am the only person with adequate qualifications to pick things up from the floor. If I didn’t do it you would need stilts to walk through our house. The objects discarded are varied: small pieces of plastic, clothes shrugged off with barely a second glance, books chucked from beds, tiny multicoloured beads everywhere, the list is endless. I spend my life bent double; frankly it’s a miracle I haven’t developed a hunchback.

So, I’ve been conducting an experiment. (I can’t believe I’m admitting to this.) I keep the pegs for the washing line in an old Tupperware box by the back door. It tipped over, scattering its twenty-odd plastic pegs on the ground. Instead of tidying it up, I left it there…

“Ha,“ I said. “Let’s just see who picks that lot up.”

No one did of course; the children stepped, jumped and skipped over them, without a thought. I watched the Father of the Children as he went backwards and forwards out to the garden. Each time he either just missed or stepped on some of the pegs. I think he can’t even have seen them. Like a tall Jar Jar Binks type figure, he looked straight ahead or gazed about at his own eye level. Maybe only women look down as they walk, that’s why they’re so good at spotting things to pick up. It’s a good example of women being able to do several things at once, walking and scanning the ground before them is obviously too much for the male brain.

Finally this morning as the Father of the Children was leaving for work, I plucked up courage to ask him what was wrong. He stood by theback door, coat in hand.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “There’s just such a lot of mess everywhere, isn’t there?” he added irritably, gesturing to the spray of pegs on the ground.

Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is nearly eleven, Flo is nearly eight and Bobby is six and a half - and lives in Wiltshire.

NEXT INSTALMENT: WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL

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