Like Blokes Do

Sometimes you just have one of those days when everything goes wrong in bucketfuls, and all before eight o'clock. Today was my last day at work and it turned out to be one of those days.

We got off to a bad start this morning because Ella woke me up at ten past six to announce she'd removed her nappy and done a poo on the toilet. Closer inspection revealed she had indeed done a poo on the toilet but evidently she'd had trouble deciding between the toilet and the potty because she'd tried them both out for size, and I knew this because of the poo deposited in both of them, and on most of the floor in between. Darren missed all of this because he'd slept through the whole thing, like blokes do.

I made sure I woke him up after that though, despite the fact it's his day off. And as it was his day off he offered to go and pay my salary cheque into the bank. Problem was, the salary cheque had disappeared; it was no longer on the bookshelf where I'd left it. And because it was my last day at work, the cheque would have to be re-issued if we couldn't find it, and it would have to be re-issued today.

So we tore the place apart looking for the bloody thing, took the books off the shelves, emptied all the baskets and checked all the drawers and all this when I was ready to go out of the door for work, bag over my shoulder, the lot.

After a very frantic ten minutes I found the cheque - it was tucked away in Darren's wallet where he'd evidently put it for safekeeping and forgotten all about it, like blokes do.

So by now I was running late and when I drove the car out of the garage I noticed the clutch didn't feel right; it had been difficult to get the gear stick into position for a few days, but now the pedal felt spongy as well.

Darren had noticed it last night but didn't think it was dangerous, thought it would be okay to leave it, like blokes do, but when I drove it this morning I wasn't convinced.

The thing is, we'd had the Honda in for it's annual service the week before last. The Honda is one of our only assets here in Australia and it's something we need to sell so we can bring some money home. Anyway, the annual service cost a whopping $1700 (About £600) but we had no choice other than to pay it, as usual, so when the clutch started to feel odd a few days ago I assumed they'd changed something about it when we'd taken it for the service

So with this in mind, I stopped by the garage at the top of the road, the garage where we'd gone for the service. Eventually I managed to flag down a mechanic, who came out for a look. Ella sat in the back kicking the driver's seat and demolishing her fairy wand with her teeth. The look said it all.

Something was wrong, definitely. At first he poured some fluid into a hole under the bonnet, then he shook his head. The fluid wasn't moving, the clutch was buggered.

"Look Darl", he said, "If you've got any way of not driving this, I'd advise you to take it".

So that was that. I wasn't going anywhere in this Honda, and neither was Ella. The pair of us were stranded and getting later by the minute. I'd have to phone Darren.

And therein lay the fourth problem of the morning, because I had no credit on my mobile phone, so not only couldn't I phone Darren, I couldn't phone work either. Darren was supposed to buy me a top-up card at the weekend, but he forgot, like blokes do.

Now in his defence, he forgot because of the incident with Ella wetting her knickers in the checkout queue at Coles, though as I wanted to point out to him, this wasn't much of a defence because (1) she wet herself because he didn't take her to the toilet and (2) the reason he got into such a tizz about it was because he'd forgotten to take a change of clothes for her, like blokes do.

Anyway, I managed to borrow the mechanic's phone to contact Darren, then Ella starts saying she wants a wee and this means trouble because I want a wee translates roughly as sit me on a toilet right now or your shoes get it.

So I have to go into the garage with Ella and ask to use the loo and yes, they're happy for me to use the loo, but it's a man's loo they explain, and they can't possibly let me go in there until they've cleaned it up a bit so I have to wait a couple more minutes while they wipe it down and remove the calendar, which might be offensive to me as obviously I'm giving off those lady of integrity vibes I'm very good at, you know the ones.

We escaped unharmed from the loo in the end and Darren turned up in the old banger (footwell full of empty cans, lady of integrity look now totally ruined) so we finally got on the road half an hour late. This meant hitting the rush hour and even worse it meant Ella falling asleep in the back of the car after her late night at the park, and all the while I'm driving on a knife-edge because I'm convinced she'll be doubly incontinent in her sleep and I'll be scraping poo off a seat for the second time in two hours.

You'll be glad to know we made it to work and nursery eventually and not another single poo incident on the way, though the verdict on the clutch was another $1100. With nine weeks to go, we're forking out on second hand cars left right and centre; whoever buys it's getting themselves a bargain.

Never mind all that though. Today was my last day at work. From now on, it's sun, sun, sun. I'm trying not to think about cars, just bring on the grill.