Friday 5 August 2011

Day 11: House husbandry

"A place for everything, and everything in its place" - Isabella Beeton, from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management.


From the outset of my short career, I travelled.  It was par for the course - time in your home office, whether that was London or elsewhere, was generally limited to a Friday, and for the rest of the working week, you were expected to schlep your way to wherever your client was based. The firm took great pains to let their graduates know that this was normal behaviour, that personal mobility and flexibility was a given, and I inked my name of the dotted line fully expecting to spend my life on the road.


I know former colleagues who went to great pains to chain themselves to within the Square Mile, shaking their heads at fantastic roles outside of the M25, and I know those who have racked up so many airmiles that they were practically on first name terms with Border Control. Some people had family lives they wished to protect, others openly believed that London is the centre of the universe (clue: it isn't, by any stretch of the imagination) and couldn't believe that business could possibly be conducted outside of the capital.  Still others grasped the opportunity to see the world on the company dime and worked in Spain, the Czech Republic, India, even Australia.


Me, I was somewhere within the middle, fortunate enough to mix time in London with time away, but at one point, I visited the London office three times in six months, as I worked my way along the South Coast (a far from unpleasant experience in the summer of '09).  I stayed in ten different hotels in that period, always aiming for small independent boutiques (within budget of course) rather than the faceless chains that knew you by number rather than by your favourite gin, and I would be lying if I said I didn't rather enjoy the plumped up pillows, the attentive service, and the endless, needless supply of three-course dinners.


But I was coming home every Friday night, shattered from another two-hour train-plus-tube journey from Cosham or Totton or Worthing, and finding that my housemates were becoming increasingly, worryingly accustomed to my absence.  I'd be left out of house dinners, not maliciously, but simply because I wasn't expected to be available.  I'd wake up on a Saturday morning and find a fully stocked wine-rack, but no bread in the cupboard. I'd be faced with the choice of either braving the Holloway Road on a Saturday and raid the supermarket, or eat out, or worse convince myself that I didn't even really need to three proper meals a day. I'd try to do my laundry, and find that my housemates had already block booked the machine throughout the weekend.  I'd be invited out to dinner and resent the fact that this was something I'd actually have to pay for myself rather than simply waving a corporate credit card. I'd be invited to a gig or play on a weeknight, and would have to reluctantly turn the opportunity down as I knew I would be in a hotel room instead, either working, eating, or sleeping.


In short, I was slowly, but surely, forgetting how to live life.

Fast forward to the present day, where Jo now quite reasonably assigns me tasks to carry out during the day while she is actually earning money.  She asked me to wash the towels - I managed to wash none of the dirty ones and all of the ones she had washed the week before.  She asked me to cook fajitas - I'd have to check with her exactly how long rice took before it became edible and not toxic.  I've taken on, willingly, the mantle of house husband, but I'm about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. 



Fortunately, I'm learning, and I have an extremely patient girlfriend who is dragging me back to the real world.  I'm determined to stay there, and earn my keep.