Author: ThirdCat

February

It is an awesome time of year in Adelaide because the festival of arts and its fringe begin. It’s a wonderful time of the year, the city is full of vibrancy and vibe, and I find it fuels my motivation to create and to work harder at my own art. (Slightly political note: I think in this state we still don’t properly acknowledge that government policy which relies so heavily on festivals is not necessarily fabbo for fostering and developing local arts and artists.)

There’s quite a bit of parenting I’m shit at, but one thing I do well is take them to stuff. I curate an excellent programme that spans the spectrum of arts experiences from visceral to cerebral, I take a couple of risks, and throw in a few of the commercial certainties. It’s great, I’m terrific, you know this, it’s great.

So I’ve spent a few hours today looking through the programmes to see what there might be that the lads and I can do together. It’s been a bit more difficult today than in previous years. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve got a slightly fuzzy brain. You see the mister was less jetlagged than expected last night so we ended up going out and when we got there I realised that because the mister is here I don’t have to be a responsible adult and I proceeded to down gin cocktails like a teenager who has just discovered west coast coolers. The main reason though is that they’ve got their own opinions about what they do and don’t want to see and when they do and don’t want to go. It’s also not so easy to find things that not only appeal to adolescents but that they are happy to go to with their mum. Nonetheless, I’ve locked a few things in and even managed to squeeze in a couple of things before the mister jets back off to his mysterious life.

I made one interesting observation while I was analysing the programme, and that is that there is an ever-diminishing number of Dave/Davo/Davids plying their comedy wares. In 2009 when I was last in the fringe there were more Dave/Davo/Davids than there were women and that included if you added up all of the women in all of the lineups. This says something more about the age demographic than it does about gender, and watching your name go so entirely out of fashion is one of the more disconcerting experiences of ageing and certainly one that no one warned me about.

And now if you’ll excuse me I need to go and shake off the last of the gin haze because I am out for dinner where I am told there will be champagne.

Saturday afternoon

So just in case the dog doesn’t eat its own vomit I am, even as we speak, rehearsing my surprised face for when the mister gets home from cricket. ‘OMG, that’s disgusting, how long has that been there I’ve been so lost in my work I didn’t even hear it.’

It’s not a complete lie. I have been focussed on my work. But not so focussed that I missed the distinctive sound of an animal retching. Really, who would have pets? It’s not just the sick and the poo…

…so, I was interrupted mid-sentence because my phone rang and a lovely man asked ‘are you the owner of (cat’s name)’ because in the ten minutes the big cat was outside this morning he managed to lose his collar. He (the lovely man) insisted on bringing it over so obviously I had to go downstairs and throw a cloth over the vomit as if I had just that minute discovered it because he would be able to see the vomit from the front door.

Turns out it’s a good thing the dog didn’t eat its own vomit, because the vomit was mostly a peach stone. I don’t know why a dog would swallow a peach stone. I would never eat a peach stone. But then I would never eat my own vomit either. (I really mean that, I’m not just saying that for dramatic effect.)

Our neighbour is very lovely, and it was nice to meet him, although I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t our other neighbour over the back fence who sits in her backyard and has loud conversations on the phone about frangipanis. I did not think that there was all that much mileage in a conversation about frangipanis, but my goodness there are conversations galore. I think frangipanis must be one of those plants that used to be in fashion, then everyone except the people who used to live in this house ripped them out of their gardens, and now everyone is planting them again. I hope that happens to loquats too, because I love loquats but it’s pretty rare for someone to give you a bag of loquats of their tree these days.

After I had thrown a cloth over the dog’s vomit, I scanned my immediate surroundings in the way that you do that if you know someone is about to knock on your door when you really hadn’t planned for someone to be knocking on your door. I quickly cleaned up the remnants of the Floppy Adolescent’s afternoon of online gaming. Remnants included but were not limited to:

the foil left from last night’s garlic bread that came as part of the combo deal. Last night the garlic bread was deemed disgusting and no one wants that, but apparently all it needed was another twelve hours to sit on the bench;
an empty Sprite bottle (also came as part of the combo deal);
an empty punnet that used to be a full punnet of tomatoes (did not come as part of the combo deal).

Sometimes I wonder how it is that I am nearly fifty years and I have not yet achieved greatness. Other times I don’t.

Dear Prime Minister

Dear Prime Minister

Further to my correspondence dated 1 February 2017, I am writing now to continue our one-sided dialogue.

I begin with offering you my sympathies. You must be spewing over this whole Cory Bernardi thing, eh? Like, you compromise your entire moral being to the extent that I’m sure your skin will never lose that grey pallor you’ve acquired and then he goes and does this anyway.

You have a country to lead and I have cat vomit to clean so I will get straight to the point:

Pull your head in.

Pull your head in on Nauru and Manus Island. Seriously, just pull your head in. It’s pretty clear by now that the idea of resettling people United States is either a. not going to happen; or b. result in an awful outcome for those people. It is time to convince your cabinet to find a humane and compassionate solution. For example, we could probably have them in Australia and that could probably happen pretty quickly all that is missing is political will.

Pull your head in on electricity: I know you know that climate change is a real and present threat, and that we’re better off with renewable energy than we are with coal. Do you know how I know this is what you think? Because you said it. Quit with demonising the South Australian government. Do something smart and do it smartly.

Pull your head in on your parliamentary performance: That ridiculous tirade in parliament the other day. Do you know who liked that? Political journalists who don’t get much entertainment otherwise; your back bench and Barnaby Joyce. Do you know who didn’t like it? EVERYONE ELSE IN AUSTRALIA. Do you know how I know this? I read the comments. (And apart from anything else, the logic is what? It’s okay for you to be a millionaire, but not okay for Bill Shorten to have dinner with them.)

Pull your head in on this Centrelink debacle. Seriously, mate. Not cool. Can I suggest that you find someone who currently relies on Centrelink payments and that you spend a day or two (and you will need a day or two) trying to work your way through things with them? I can guarantee you that you – like all of us who have done this – will be shocked at how difficult this is.

We are at a crucial point in the history of democracy and of political leadership. There has never been a more exciting time to be Prime Minister. (Sorry, you must be sick of that.) Perhaps instead of framing this letter in the negative tone, ‘Pull your head in,’ I should frame it more positively.

Be strong. Do good things.

Yours sincerely

Tracy Crisp

PS If, as I suggested in my previous correspondence, you did want to meet, perhaps you would like to come to a reading I’m doing at the West Terrace Cemetery on Thursday evening and we could go for a glass of chardonnay or something after that? I could also do Tuesday, but Wednesday is out because it’s my 25th wedding anniversary and I expect to be otherwise engaged. (Which reminds me – with Cory Bernardi gone you could probably do something about marriage equality now, eh?)

Claudia Karvan, white handbags and pillows of memory foam

I had something to tell you, but I can’t remember what it was. It was lighthearted and amusing and didn’t involve me sitting in front of the television watching episode one of Newton’s Law and comparing myself to Claudia Karvan. But comparing, obviously I mean saying such things as, ‘She’s really made a go of things, hasn’t she, she’s so smart and talented and my goodness she is gorgeous.’

One of the good things I’m finding about my late forties is that I’m able to be genuinely admiring of people’s successes because I understand that there’s something much more than luck in sustained success. I understand that there’s been a lot of hard work and resilience and probably a bit of picking themselves up and dusting themselves down going on behind the scenes.

At the same time of course the envy cuts deeper because middle age is as much about coming to terms with one’s middling successes as much as it is coming to terms with one’s mortality. Or perhaps they are both elements of the same thing.

(Newton’s Law has finished now and in my judgment, the jury is still out. Apart from anything else, the music could be way better.)

I still haven’t remembered what it was I was going to tell you about. It wasn’t these bites on my ankle which I got at this time last night when I was also sitting here on the couch and watching television. I don’t know how long its been since I spent two nights in a row sitting on the couch watching television. I’m watching Netflix now. Suits. It’s okay, but it’s no Boston Legal, is it? Though I tell you what it has got that Boston Legal didn’t have: Jessica’s handbags. I’m in season three and she’s just been on with the amazing white handbag ever seen in the history of amazing white handbags. I mean obviously I’d look ridiculous carrying it around Romeo’s Glenelg South Foodland, but it would totally suit me in the alternative life I sometimes construct for myself in my mind.

I’d be better off going to bed than sitting up watching shows that aren’t as good as shows I used to watch. I’m very tired partly because the bites on my ankle kept me awake all night and partly because my neighbours seem to have installed a new security light and its not their fault if they don’t know that every time a possum triggers the light my room lights up like its just been lit up by a security light that’s been triggered by a possum. Imagine how tired I’d be if I hadn’t finally treated myself to the wonder that is a tempur memory foam pillow? Oh my goodness, people get on that STAT.

Me and my banjo, a lamentable song

You might know that a little over a year ago I bought a banjo. It was a decision made on a whim at the moment that, instead of heading straight from Zayed Sports City after the rugby carnival, I turned left and headed out towards Raha Mall. I had no idea whether the music shop out there would even have a banjo and, as it turned out, nor did they. The person at the counter had to go and check with the person out the back who had to go and check with the owner who eventually came out and said, ‘Did you want a 4 string or 5?’ (His accent was Australian, east coast.)

‘Oh, five,’ I said.

It didn’t have a price on it, and he pulled a number from the air and said, ‘What do you think?’

Numbers fall out of my head the minute I hear them, so I can’t remember what I paid exactly. The owner disappeared back out the back and along with the banjo I bought the only banjo book they had and also some picks.

Picks aren’t picks.

When I got home and opened the book I discovered that guitar picks and banjo picks aren’t the same thing and of course there being only one banjo in the shop it was hardly surprising that there were no banjo picks and they had sold me the ones for guitar (not deliberately, they didn’t know). Then I was cross because they hadn’t even put them in for free.

It’s reasonably easy to get a good sound out of a banjo because, unlike guitar, the open strings make a lovely chord. I had this idea that one day – probably the next day and if not then definitely next week – I’d be able to play Rainbow Connection. I used to play that on the piano in 1983 and 84, my god I loved it. To play it on the banjo would be such retro fun. A new party trick (not that I had an old party trick, but you know what I mean).

Time has taught me that my natural talents do not lie with the banjo. I’m shit at it.

I taught myself a few things, and then I went to lessons last year, taught by a wonderful young man of excellent music talent. I’m sure he dreaded my lessons. I’m sure that every time I turned up he went home thinking Do I really the money this much? And that every time I cancelled he was like, oh, there really is a god.

I haven’t got very far. I can play a couple of chords, but my rolls are still very slow. My biggest disadvantage though is that I can’t really sing. I can hit a range of about five notes (two down from middle C and two up) with vague precision, but that does limit a person’s repertoire. So even though I learn a new song each week all I really do is play the same chords in different combinations.

The only way I’m really going to get any better is to play a whole lot more than I do. But the thing about middle age is that you have this ever-increasing awareness of the value of time and there are so many things I want to get better at in the space where banjo might be – sewing, baking, reading poetry. I want to read more books and watch more movies than I do.

I’ve always lived my life by doing more things, but I wonder if that’s changing. Maybe I want to commit to other things by deciding that I’m not committed to my banjo.

What would Kermit do?

Household ratios and relativities

In the house where I live the current adult to teenager ratio is 1:2.

The human to animal ratio is 1:1.

You will not be surprised to learn that there is some friction where these ratios intersect with the human to cat litter tray ratio which is 3:2.

Everyone is taking their turn and everything (cleaning the cat litter tray, not using it, before whichever smartarse gets in first with that one), but all the same and nonetheless adult humans and teenage humans have different standards when it comes to such matters. Particularly when – as as the case in this house – the adult human spends more time in the house than the teenage humans.

On an unrelated note, I went to the hairdresser today. When she asked me what we were going to do today I said that I was thinking maybe, I wasn’t sure, but if she thought it was okay maybe we could try a bit of red. She was thrilled. She’s a wonderful hairdresser and she doesn’t let you do dramatic stuff if she thinks it will make you burst into tears at the the end. So when she said yes I felt that I was in safe hands.

I did miscommunicate though, and where I thought we would be adding some red foils in the way we have been adding some blonde foils we instead made my whole hair red.

I have had red hair in the past a great number of times, but it has been some years since the last time. Seeing your red hair revealed is far more dramatic than seeing a few blonde foils. It is extremely red. Not a coppery red, a warmer more brunette red than that. But red. Do you see that green in the photograph at the top up there? If that green were red then that would be the colour of my hair.

That grass is not real grass which I think is what gives that green and my red their equivalence.

The problem with red is that just when you get used to it and think, I’m just going to find myself a mirror so that I can admire my fabulous red hair, it has faded and you are left wondering why you spent all that time and money at the hairdresser’s. But then you remember the massage they gave you when they were rinsing your hair and you think that it’s worth it.

Do you know how I know that my hair is dramatically red? Both of the teenage humans noticed that I had done something to my hair.

I would like to have got more done today, but in between being the adult in that series of ratios described above and watching my hair change colour I didn’t have much time left. I did do some fossicking on the ikea website because nearly a year after moving into this house the ratio of things that need to be put in cupboards to cupboards where things could be put remains more out of whack than the ratio of adult humans to cat litter trays.

I’m not at all sure what I learnt from today.

An inauspicious beginning

I try not to give in too much to feeling sorry for myself, but it was 6.15 am on my birthday, and I was on my way to the bathroom to throw up (because my perimenopausal body had decided that today was the day the menstrual nausea would visit) when I came across first a dog poo then second a cat vomit.

The beginning of my 49th year (it being my 48th birthday) was off to something of an ordinary start I think we can all agree. After throwing up, then cleaning up (dog poo first then cat vomit), then throwing up again I made myself a cup of tea. The name of the tea is womankind, but I think it is just a coincidence that it is pink on account of the fact that its ingredients include cranberry.

All of this was conducted in alternate states of swearing at the absent mister (using both adjectives and nouns) and crying. The kind of crying I was doing was the one where you’d prefer to be angry than sad, but you’re enormously sad and so a river of tears runs down your cheeks and you know your face is going to look puffy for the rest of the day. Also, I wear increasingly magnifying glasses which means that my eyes look slightly larger than they really are. Or slightly puffier. Depending on how the day is going.

This situation made me grumpy because the tarot reader I saw last year told me that we live our lives in cycles of seven years and so this coming year would be the first year of the new cycle so it would be exciting and all of the hard work of the last couple of years would begin to come to fruition. Of course, I don’t actually believe in tarot cards or runes, but I visit tarot readers regularly (but not frequently) and I often cast my runes just to see what they say. Which is a fair amount of commitment for something you don’t believe in.

Anyhoo, I got back into bed with my cup of tea and I was going to continue watching Wives and Daughters on Netflix. There was a whatsapp message from the mister who had stayed up late to make sure that he could send me a birthday message when I woke up. I ignored it which was rude, but not as rude as swearing at him (using above-mentioned adjectives and nouns).

I’m almost certain that Wives and Daughters was one of the novels on one of my Major English Texts reading lists in around 1988 which almost certainly means that I’ve never got around to reading it. I have not been enjoying the Netflix series at all (she has a most annoying stare) and sometime after I finished my cup of tea I fell back asleep.

It was a lovely refreshing sleep as such sleeps often are and when I was woken at 8.30 I was sufficiently recovered from my earlier misadventures to eat some of the breakfast that was delivered to me in bed after a gentle knock on the door. It was smoked salmon and avocado on toast which is one of my favourite foods, but I could only eat one slice. Perimenopausal nausea is awful, but usually lasts only a couple of hours at a time. There was also some fruit salad which was a beautifully-scented combination of blueberries and nectarines. I ate all of that. (Please note the second piece of toast was not wasted as it was consumed by the morning’s chef.)

Later in the day I was passing by Haigh’s and I bought myself a dozen peppermint creams. I have always loved peppermint creams because they remind me of a scene in a novel I used to re-read when I was young where the heroine stands against a lamppost eating a bag of peppermint creams. I have some vague sense that the peppermint creams were obtaining illicitly, but I remember nothing else about the novel – not why she was standing there, nor what happened next, not even what the novel was called. But I still adore peppermint creams.

I am a few days into my 49th year now, and while nothing particularly outstanding has happened so far, I have not had to clean up any dog poo or cat vomit and so I think we can say things have improved. I wish I had some moral to share with you, some lesson, some stunning conclusion. But really it was just a day that got off to an inauspicious start and never progressed past ordinary.

A week of bits and pieces

I got offered a writer’s residency this week. Reading the email to tell me that my application for the residency was successful wasn’t quite as exciting as reading the email to tell me that my next novel would be published, but it was a wonderful email nonetheless. Writer-in-residence. Hey, wow, that’s so cool. Yay. It made me feel like I was back in my writer’s life. And it’s only now that I’m starting to feel that way again, that I do feel like I am living a writer’s life, that I realise I wasn’t feeling it before.

Some people find that turmoil and grief and black thoughts and long dark nights are good for their art and creativity. That absolutely wasn’t my experience. I found it almost impossible to write in the years after my dad’s death and through my grandfather’s ageing. That has had a far bigger impact on my writing than I realised. I was convinced – by which I mean I was filled with the belief – that I would never write anything of any substance again. The depth of that conviction was revealed to me over Christmas when I got my contributor copies of The Griffith Review: State of Hope. It’s the first thing I’ve submitted for years. When I flicked through and found it there, my writing published, I burst into tears. Proper sobbing tears.

I’ve often wondered whether people ever make conscious decisions that they’re not going to write. Like a teacher might leave teaching or an accountant might leave accounting, would a writer ever leave writing? Probably not. I imagine much more common is the gradual process of writing less and less, along with the whittling away of time until one day you wake up and think, Wait! What? But I was going to be a writer!

Over the last couple of years as my life has been going through a few transitions and as other transitions have been looming, I’ve had to think about what I’m going to do with myself, how I’m going to live my life. The thoughts I’d had about no longer being a writer solidified for quite some time. I know all the cliches that age is just a number and you’re only as old as you feel and fifty is the new seventeen and so on…but middle age made me think more carefully about how I spend my increasingly limited time. Sitting in front of your computer stringing words together that might or might not coalesce into a story that might or might not float a publisher’s boat and that people might or not respond to is one way of spending time, but there are many others. Making a living for example. There’s something more…a person has to make peace with the knowledge that even if writing is what she does best, she isn’t the best at writing. This is partly ego and a girl needs to get over herself, but also when a person reads a lot of wonderful books it does make her think that maybe there are better ways she can be of use to the world.

…none of this is what I intended to tell you…I was going to tell you about the residency but then I was going to tell you about the rest of my week as well…
…About the three day InDesign course I went to for two days and abandoned on the third because otherwise I would have needed brain surgery on the fourth oh my goodness humans is this the best we can do surely there are better ways of getting things from our brains to the printer;
…about the portrait session I had with a photographer because I need new headshots done – ‘Can you flirt a little bit?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked back and holy moly I really hope the mister doesn’t cark it because truly ruly my state of global celibacy will be permanent;
…about teaching the floppy adolescent to drive because he turned 16 and got his Ls and deadset one hundred percent this is the stuff that What to Expect When You’re Expecting doesn’t warn you about, eh…
and I do feel wrong for not even mentioning the fact that when I woke up this morning it was to the horrifying news that it is not just a dream and he-who-shall-not-be-named has been inaugurated as the president of a democracy and sweet baby cheeses save us all. But I’ve run out of writing time and I have to go and get the Future Prime Minister from cricket and if I don’t press publish now I never will.

Not Last Night, but the Night Before: The Esplanade

A summer storm is blowing in and now is the calm before. The air is heavy but not heaving, the wind is a whisper and the sea is not-quite calm. The water, the clouds, the sky are grades of grey and blue. They suit my mood which, at new year, is resolvant melancholy.

(no, you’re right, resolvant isn’t a word, but what then is a melancholic when she is resolved?)

In the houses of The Esplanade – town houses with sea views from front windows and neighbours’ clotheslines from the rest – BBQs are firing, sundowners are downed. I walk along the wide paved path between the houses and the sand. Around me, thin and sinewed runners take straight lines while children on their scooters turn and weave. Babies in prams, on hips, in slings. Men and women grown old together are walking hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm or three steps apart.

Below, in the sand and the sea, families and couples and tribes of young adults (through the eyes of middle age these last are grown up children, aren’t they, but don’t tell them I think that way – they’ll only roll their eyes). Mothers wrap first towels and then their arms around shivering children. There are rubber balls, tennis balls and frisbees. From here, there is no sound when they hit the sand, a splash when they hit the water and, when the throw is bad, the stinging slap against wet skin (ya fkn dkhd, what was that?).

A spotter plane (fixed wing, I know these things) flies close to the shore. This summer, sharks are spotted every second day (it’s the bogans on the jetty chucking the crab nets off the jetty down at Brighton; how shocking sharks in their own habitat what do u expect u moron – this is what I’ve learnt from facebook). I have heard the sirens sound and seen the water cleared while helicopters hover and rubber boats charge out from the shore. Cartilaginous beasts and their teeth are not welcome here.

Dogs, their owners walking in opposite directions, slow down, sniff, then chase. Their owners stand, facing each other, calling their dogs. The dogs run, first to one voice then the other, back and forth, splashing through the shallows and kicking up the sand. The human voices first are high, then as frustration grows they deepen. Who knows why but the dogs stop their frolic and part, running towards their owners.

I have been past the café, the storm water drain (a trickle now but it will gush when the storm blows in), the sculpture. I have turned and now I’m nearly back at the start. My children will be home from cricket and surf lifesaving and needing to be fed. But I’m not ready to go home, not ready to leave this place where the land meets the sea and we are, all of us – walking, swimming, running, calling our dogs, chasing our kids – together but apart.

I sit on an empty bench. It is dedicated by plaque to a man whose name I will never remember by a woman I’ll never know. Now that I have stopped I can hear the sea rolling in. The waves are breaking softly across the sand. That sound must have been there while I was walking but I guess I couldn’t hear it above my thoughts. At my feet are three cigarette butts that were pushed out of shape by smokers’ thumbs before they were flicked to the ground or flattened under shoes. I see smudges of black ash, chewing gum stains and ants on their well-trodden path.

Snatches of conversation sound behind me. I don’t know what she wants from me … I know and that’s the situation in Germany too … yeah but mate, who gives a fuck.

Another plane – a jet – taken off from the airport a few kilometres down, flies out, gaining altitude over the sea before it banks and flies back towards the shore. I have already told you that I love the sight and the sound of those jets, but every day I love them more. They take my love and then they bring him home to me. The goodbye is getting harder but it takes less time to find my equilibrium.

A woman and a man are together in the sea. They are facing the shore, and she is behind him, her arms wrapped around his shoulders while his cannot be seen. He turns his head. Her neck stretches forward.

They kiss.

I think, Who knows what goes on beneath the surface.

Perhaps their feet are buried in the sand and they are grounded.
Or maybe they are floating.
Weightless.

The laundry

When I was of an age that I now recognise as young, but then believed was old, I used, sometimes, when faced with an empty knicker drawer, to go to the supermarket and buy another six pack of cheap knickers rather than do a load of washing. On other occasions I would get a load of washing on and then forget it for a week by which time it was a rotting mess of fabric that would have to be washed and then forgotten all over again and in the meantime I’d have to go back to the supermarket to get another six pack of cheap knickers. Wash, rinse, repeat.

When the mister and I first moved in together, some twenty six years ago (WTF and does time not fly) the household chores were divided by that most well-established tradition of Domestic Attrition. Whoever gets into the shower, looks down at the grime that’s gathered in the corners and thinks, ‘Oh, god, that is going to crawl out of the corner and eat me in the night if I don’t disintegrate it with bleach,’ is the loser and spends the rest of the day in a frenzy of fevered cleaning.

Except the washing. The mister always did the washing. At first we used the laundromat and then we inherited a twin tub which suited our youthfully optimistic recycling ways as we hooked hoses from here to there and used the water more than once. Well, when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘he.’

I overheard a conversation between the mister and his mother not long after we had started co-habiting, the main focus of which centred on the question, ‘And what does Tracy do?’

‘Mostly she has ideas,’ he said. It is perhaps the best character summation he’s ever done.

Our division of tasks became more, erm, traditional over the years, particularly once we had children and he continued to leave the house to earn an income and I stayed home caring for the children and having ideas. I even, for a good number of years, began to take on the washing. Nappies every day (oh, god, what was I thinking) and dedicating Fridays to the bulk of the laundry declaring in tones worthy of my grandmothers’ time, ‘I always do the laundry of a Friday.’

Then things changed again, we moved to Abu Dhabi, my mental health collapsed under the weight of exhaustion and grief, I started full time work again, and things shifted a bit. I continued to do loads of washing, but increasingly often left them in the machine to fester. And the mister, who is more often gainfully employed than I am, has a more urgent need for clean clothes than I do. One thing led to another and it became his job again. As it happens, I think watching the mister walk around the house with baskets of laundry clean and dirty, wet and dry, stands as the best feminist teaching we’ve done. We all pull our domestic weight. The mister coordinated it all, the Floppy Adolescent had to do the towels and the Future Prime Minister was in charge of hanging the smalls. And I continued to leave all of my clothes in a pile on the chair. It was an excellent system.

Except that now, here I am, living in a different country to the mister and I seem to be doing all of the washing again.

In truth, there are parts of the washing I love. Well, one part. Getting it out of the machine and onto the line. Carrying the heavy basket on my hip, breathing in the smell of clean clothes The methodical rhythm of hanging it on the line. The sense of order. But then, after that…I have three laundry baskets and I’m thinking of getting a fourth to hold the overflow.

‘We need a system!’ The Floppy Adolescent declared after a particularly terse morning of, ‘Mum! Where’s my…’ and ‘Mum! Have you seen…’ And all of the clean clothes, many of them folded, being tipped from the basket onto the unwashed floor as the Floppy Adolescent searched for socks and the Future Prime Minister looked for shorts.

I did not drive him out to a forest and tell him to find his way home. See how restrained I am?

‘You know what, Mum?’ the Floppy Adolescent said a few days later. ‘I’ve noticed it’s all been left up to you and so I’ve got an idea.’

‘Well, maybe we should just share it out a bit more.’

‘No, I know exactly how it’s going to work.’

The morning passed and so did the afternoon.

‘So, Floppy Adolescent, the washing…’

‘Wot?’ he said looking up, bleary-eyed from six hours of watching you-tubers playing games (no, seriously, WTF young ones what is with that?)

‘The washing. I’m running out of knickers, and school uniforms need to be done.’

‘Wot? Did you think we were starting today? No, today I just had the idea.’

Genetic mirrors, hey?