Cushy

It's raining in Sydney this morning, pouring down at times, and though the temperatures are still in the mid twenties, Sydney doesn't half look crap in the rain. To quote my former colleague Hilary, it looks like a shanty town.

The frustration of city life has taken it's toll since January but today I feel particularly cheesed off because once again the frustration of city life has combined with the frustration of being a wife and mother; one of those days I feel like a pressure cooker with the top thingy just about to blow.

This morning I drove Ella to nursery as usual, though we were half an hour late leaving the flat because Darren was letting me have a half hour lie-in (you know, 7am being a lie-in) and he forgot and didn't wake me up until 7.30. Then about a third of the way to nursery I noticed there wasn't a drop of petrol left in the car; Darren had been driving it yesterday and seemingly hadn't noticed, you know, like blokes don't.

You see, behind every man there's a great woman, picking up the pieces and mopping up the mess, and that includes most of the women I know. And yes, Batman's a clever bloke and yes, he's lovely, but like many clever people, he has absolutely bugger all common sense, so not only does he leave the car without petrol, he leaves wet swimming costumes in bags for days on end, forgets to pay his bills (to the extent we've had a mobile phone debt passed onto baliffs while we've been in Sydney) and generally goes through life in a bit of a daze. So when he says "Ella's ready for nursery", he means she's standing by the front door, it doesn't mean he's brushed her teeth or brushed her hair or put on her shoes. I'm sure all blokes are the same, so it amazes me that women want to have more than one child, because dealing with a husband and a child at the same time is sometimes a bit like being a zoo keeper, only you don't get paid.

And the thing is, I do actually remember what it was like not to have all this to deal with, and I'm not one of those earth-mother types who wants a child hanging off every available nipple, one of those who doesn't notice when their child wipes a spaghetti bolognaise hand on their jacket. I do still notice that, which is probably why dealing with a toddler drives me round the bend. I don't mind admitting that at times I'd like to go back to being a single woman earning a proper income and driving a nice car without biscuit crumbs on the back seat, you know, thinking about handbags and boots and how long to grow my hair. I don't judge those who enjoy all the mess and all the hard work, the lack of sleep, the poo everywhere. I just don't really believe them.

Anyway, having noticed we had no fuel, I had a quick mental reccie of the petrol stations along our route and realised the car would actually cut out before we reached any of them, so had to turn around and head back home again to get to the nearest garage. And then when I tried to join the road again I found a whole series of no right turns and realised I'd have to take a completely different route, a route which left me stuck in shocking traffic in shocking rain, wondering what the hell I was doing.

The problem is, Ella loves going to nursery, and perhaps just as importantly, I love her going to nursery as well, but the nursery is a good forty minutes drive away, and by the time you've parked up and sorted her out, you're looking at at least an hours round trip, twice a day. The alternative is, well, there isn't an alternative. The nursery place was the only one I could find and even then we jumped an enormous waiting list. It wasn't so bad while I was working because the nursery was round the corner from my office, but now it all seems an enormous hassle, especially when you've been left without petrol.

We got there in the end of course, an hour and ten minutes after we left the flat, and it was worth it to see Ella's eyes light up when she saw her friends crowding around Vilma's mystery bag, all trying to guess what she'd pull out of it next. And that left me free to go to the gym, the gym I haven't been to for a whole six weeks, either through exhaustion or through lack of time. At least something was going to go right today.

When I arrived at the gym half an hour later, the queue to enter the shopping centre car park was stretching all down the high street. There was nowhere else to park because the spaces on the street are limited to thirty minutes. I gave up, I went home.

Darren was lying on the floor underneath our other car when I got back to the flat, his feet dangling out into the rain. He was changing the tyre after it was slashed by the man in flat number 38, you know, slashed because he didn't like us parking it in a visitor's spot. It happened months ago but we haven't got around to fixing it, so the car's been in the visitor's spot ever since. He's changed the tyre, but the car's been sitting there so long it won't start.

We have a cushy life in Sydney, but sometimes I wouldn't mind swapping it.