Paging Dr Freud!
My folks are on holiday in Italy at the moment. This has repercussions on me and Misssy A, my wee sister.
Mum has left us a list of things we must do for her whilst she’s away. It’s a kind of barter system, where if we do certain odd-jobs then we’ve a better chance of getting her to babysit the kids whilst we go out and behave like idiots. Given that me and Meeester, Misssy A and her husband, The Bearded Liar, are all angling for an Overnight Pass next Saturday* we cannot even bitch about any of it.
My mum and dad own a holiday cottage that is right beside their Massive House That Is Far Too Big for Just The Two of Them. When Mum and Dad go on holiday me and Misssy A have to clean the cottage and let new visitors in. My hatred of housework is well documented, but the cottage is never as bad as my house at any given time, so it’s usually not too bad.
So that’s where I was the other day, being an unpaid Putz Frau. The husbands were dodging the cleaning and the childminding by recording the Album-That-Better-Make-US-All-Horribly-Rich-And Allow Us To-Give-Up-Our-Jobs, so we also had five kids in tow.
To get the kids out of the way I spend an hour making up a “SpringWatch Challenge” for them beforehand. Mum and dad’s place is in the country, so they’ll be at it for hours. The SpringWatch Challenge employs the seminal teaching technique of “FOFO”†. My sister immediately laughs at my delusion as I present the SW Challenge to the assembled beasts.
The challenge takes the kids 20 minutes and we have to bribe them with sweets to go away for another 20 to give us time to get the job done. Should have just bought mountains of sweets in the first place (or locked them in a pen).
Once we are finished we have to do the laundry and I opt to do this alone the next day as I am using Mum’s (lovelier, cleaner, better equipped, more luxurious,kid-free) house to complete my penultimate freelance job.
So on Sunday I set off to Mum and Dad’s with my laptop, put the washing in the machine and switch on the computer to begin the script from Hell, that is a Mechanical Isolations Course for a Middle Eastern Energy Company. It’s not going to win me a Bafta, let’s put it that way…
Then I find myself reverting to student mode, without even being conscious of it. I start using the facilities. I look in my folks’ drinks cabinet to see what booty they have and pour myself a glass of something expensive. I shower and use some of Mum’s products on my hair (my Mum has every hair frizz diminishing product known to man), I minesweep the cupboards for crisps and sweets, and I rearrange the three graduation photos of me, Uncle E and Misssy A so that mine is most prominent. I stop short at ransacking the place to see if my Dad still buys porn and dressing up in my mum’s wedding dress…
What the blazes is wrong with me? I’m 38!
*Meeester’s band are playing local dive, The Moorings, which is like the Blue Oyster Bar in Police Academy but with Goths instead of the Village People. (They are roadtesting their new album on the Goths, Metalheads and Weirdos before they bring it to the masses)
† FOFO: Fuck Off and Find Out. My students are well aware of this technique.
