Читать книгу Single Father, Better Dad - Mark Tucker - Страница 11

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 the distraction of my social observations, partly because I didn’t know where anything was and, perhaps most 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 for money. We were a well-drilled and efficient team and I was effectively only outlaying $25 a week on the cleaner. If I avoided the temptation to drink during the week it pretty much paid for itself and got rid of one of my most hated chores. It was a great trade off.

I also took the big decision not to build my future social life around my weekly trip to Coles. My feelings of social excitement and anticipation were becoming more and more subdued as the weeks went by and I failed to spot, let alone make flirtatious contact with, anyone who looked remotely interesting. At the same time, the inane drudgery of parking, wandering the aisles and packing and unpacking the car was becoming more and more frustrating. Plus, on occasions, I was forced to take a longer checkout queue because of the need to avoid Sharni. All in all, it was a couple of hours of my weekend that I wanted back, and I didn’t have many spare hours.

I didn’t give up on Coles completely because I ventured into the wonderful world of online shopping. This is not just a great labour saving device—you can shop from the comfort of your own office—but it also takes the stress out of weekend shopping. Admittedly, there is quite a lot of work to do to get started, but for a time short single parent it is a fabulous concept. It was quite overwhelming initially—there was so much on the website. There were some fifty-three different types of bread to choose from and another twenty odd types of milk—normal, low fat, no fat, 1L, 2L, 3L etc, etc. And, because I wasn’t an experienced shopper, I didn’t know what I normally bought and, in particular, how much of something I normally bought.

I found a good way forward was to blend online shopping with regular shopping for a few weeks while I developed a feel for what I needed. I kept my shopping receipts and used them to populate my standard online orders. Generally this worked well, although I still made a few volume errors in the early months. I now know 250g of mixed nuts is not very much and that 2kg of chicken is enough to feed a family of ten. On one occasion, due to an unfortunate slip of the mouse, a whole leg of ham was delivered, instead of the 250g of sliced leg ham I thought that I had ordered.

But with experience I became a proficient user. It’s a fantastic way of shopping for basics and getting them delivered to your door—as long as you avoid fruit and vegetables (it’s best to see and choose these yourself, otherwise you can end up with a bunch of skanky veg and bruised fruit). As an added bonus my social interactions with the down-to-earth delivery drivers were always much more pleasant, and embarrassment free, than those with Sharni and her associates.

Over time I developed a routine that worked for me. I made sure I always did the washing and went to the butcher and fruit shop on Saturday morning (when they were open!), did my household chores on Sunday morning and ordered a Coles online delivery for a midweek evening. This broadly left both weekend afternoons for free time. It was the only way that I could survive. I had to have order and routine at the weekends otherwise they would get away from me, I would not have enough ‘me time’ and I would get back to work on Monday feeling terribly frustrated—and I knew that if I stopped performing at work and lost my job then I really would be in trouble.

My routine, with a little bit of refinement, worked well for me over the years and generally ensured I got enough down time. It meant the basics were covered and it gave me time to focus on the really important and difficult challenges—bringing up two teenage daughters.

And anyway the cavalry were arriving; my mum was on her way to Australia.