Читать книгу The Yummy Mummy’s Family Handbook - Liz Fraser - Страница 33

June 2006, 8 p.m.

Sometimes I honestly believe that I am the only person in this house who is even vaguely aware of their surroundings. I swear, if I didn’t continuously go around like a neurotic hen, picking up, putting away, wiping, sweeping, adjusting, mending and improving this place, we would still live in a hideous, smelly dump of a place with 1970s carpets, embossed wallpaper and carpet in the kitchen! The worst thing is that I am made to feel that all of this house-improvement is solely for my own benefit, and that nobody else really minds living in a shit-hole. This is so unfair. Surely all my effort is making life for all of us more pleasant, and probably increasing the value of the house at the same time? A little appreciation and HELP really wouldn’t go amiss.

It’s astounding to me that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when we can fly to Mars, communicate with the other side of the world almost instantaneously, watch crap on over a hundred television channels and buy jeans to fit every imaginable shape of man, woman or child, the workload required to run a family home is still utterly unequally divided between the members of the family. On the home front, it’s as though we haven’t progressed since the Dark Ages—bar the better-fitting clothes, of course—and it’s something that brings out the raving feminist in me, even when my husband is being especially helpful.

Let me give you some examples from my dear, honest, wornout friends.