Back off

I’m not really a very demanding person. I just want a lovely, comfortable home, at exactly the right temperature (not too hot, not too cold), well-behaved, quiet and studious children, delicious meals (preferably not ALL prepared by me) and a life of uneventful, untroubled ease. It’s not much to ask, is it? I’m not cut out for suffering. It makes me the teeny, weeniest bit tetchy, some people say.

These are people wearing tin hats and hiding in deep, deep bunkers.

Unfortunately, the unwise universe has caused me not one, but two problems recently. The first is a backache, which I developed after conducting a thorough life laundry of Child Two’s room, purging assorted crap treasures, outgrown clothes, singleton but beloved flip-flops and generations of balls of fluff living happily under the furniture. Although it did mean I spent the rest of the day prostrate, reading the Sunday papers while a human chain formed on the stairs to keep me supplied with tea, coffee and hot cross buns (result!), I was forced off my bed of pain the next morning to resume school run duties. Since when I have been stricken by calamity number two – a cold. A cold of the type, obviously, that any self-respecting man would call flu or even pneumonia.

It so isn’t fair. Just when the children are back at school, and I could finally be watching reruns of Silent Witness in peace working hard on my novel, I am unable to shuffle even a centimetre away from the tissue box and daren’t risk picking up the remote my laptop for fear of dark shooting pains. Harrumph.

At least I’ve got you to whinge to. Oh, what’s that? Urgent appointment? No, I quite understand. Off you go, then. Sigh. Sniff.

Brooklyn Museum's Marriage Bed

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