3. Love is putting yourself last

My wife has started her new job and I’m jealous. Massively jealous. Oh, I’m doing a good job of hiding it – y’know, sulking, scowling, snapping. That kind of thing.  I had been determined NOT to submit to the petulant side of my nature. I wanted to show her how big, and noble, and mature, and supportive I was.

That word: supportive. She had been supportive of me while my career flourished this past decade. But I’d always reasoned that that was her choice. She gave up a well-paid top-of-the-tree job so that we could begin a life together, start a family. We didn’t want strangers bringing up our kids. One of us would stay at home to bring them up. And that one of us was never going to be me!

I loved work. She loved work, too. But it never really occurred to me that her giving up her career to have my kids was a sacrifice. If anything, I believed she was lucky to have the ‘luxury’ of being a stay-at-home mum. Wasn’t that what all women wanted? That’s what I read in the Observer the other day, anyway. Women don’t want careers: they want to meet a rich man so they can stay home and raise kids (though I think what the participants of this survey really meant was they wanted their man to be so rich that the wife could stay at home AND give orders to a nanny about raising their kids).

Work gave me money, status, self-esteem – all the usual cliches you read about in the lifestyle sections of newspapers. But most of all, it gave me money – MY money, to spend and share as I chose. Anyone who says money can’t buy you happiness has never been skint enough to take a sackful of copper coins to the local supermarket cash-converter machine to raise enough for a few beers. Money IS happiness: money gives you security, feeds your kids, pays for the roof over your head. And at the moment, I don’t have any.

When my wife told me about her new job, my first reaction was relief.

‘Thank God,’ I said to her. ‘Thank God for YOU. At least one of us is employable. Oh thank God.’

And I meant it. For all the reasons stated in my previous posts,  I have finally accepted – I’ve HAD to accept – that I will never work in a s0-called high-powered position again.

My wife was – is – going to be the breadwinner now, and I’d better get used to the idea. Macho pride and male ego will have to take a backseat. Jibes from my working brothers and friends about being a ‘kept man’ would have to be water of a duck’s back. This is about survival.

It was with such a mentality that I approached the final day of the pre-New Life Challenge.

On Sunday evening, I poured her a glass of wine and ran her a bath.

‘Put your feet up. Relax. Don’t lift a finger,’ I said. ‘You’re the worker now. I want you to concentrate on earning money, on keeping this family clothed and fed.’

She eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t object, as I unfolded the ironing board and pressed three sets of children’s clothes for the following morning. After her bath, I cooked our last supper of freedom together: slow-roasted lamb shanks in a citrus gravy, accompanied by mashed potatoes, butternut squash and asparagus (the recipe is on my Come Dine With Keith blog).

‘To new beginnings,’ I said, raising a toast, my smile only slightly rictus.

The look on my wife’s face said, ominously: ‘This isn’t going to last.’

But it did. For another 8 hours or so. I sprung out of bed at the crack of dawn, roused the kids, served them their breakfast of choice (Shreddies for the nine-year-old; cornflakes for the middle; Weetabix for the youngest), brushed their teeth, brushed their hair, got them dressed, stopped them bickering, then made a cup of tea for my Working-Wife-To-Be as she stepped out of the shower.

‘Thanks love,’ she said. ‘You’re being so supportive. I couldn’t do this without you.’

Aw shucks, it’s nothing, I thought. And that’s how it felt. Even when I was out of work I spent my entire time looking for work. My wife did the chores and took care of the kids, which seemed mostly to involve nagging and cajoling, like a shepherd with a flock of antagonistic sheep. So now, for the first time, we had a complete role reversal.

We waved my wife – their mother – off to work, then blew her kisses as she disappeared out of sight.

The day from there – in mind-numbing detail – went as follows:
- Pack kids into car to take Child 1 to school a couple of miles away
- Get home, unpack kids
- Change Child 3′s trousers and pants after accident in car
- Walk Children 2 and 3 to school and nursery respectively
- Shout at Child 2 to stop running ahead because his brother can’t keep up
- Encourage Child 3 to walk faster because I feel we’ve been rooted to the same spot looking at privets for an hour
- Back home. Check job boards, emails etc. Nothing.
- Unload dishwasher, re-wash greasy film off plates and pans because dishwasher is broken
- Load washing machine. Whites only, but never my wife’s stuff after Pinkgate Incident some months ago (I find pink pants and bras quite attractive, but she prefers the original white for some reason!)
- Strip our bed. Can’t find fresh pillowcases so, sod it, iron old ones and put them back on. She’ll never be able to tell.

And on and on and on and…I’m actually boring myself writing it.

Next stage:
- pick up C3 from nursery
- sit next to him while encouraging him to despatch his lunch into the potty. A valiant but vain endeavour
- play Ker-plunk with him
- promise him a go on my iPhone Angry Birds app if he goes back to potty
- he announces a ‘big wee’ with a ‘Voila!’
- drops iPhone into potty
- ten minutes to C2 collection
- fish iPhone from potty. Wipe it with a flannel. Smell it. Not too bad. It still works
- on way to collect C2 from school. C3 decides the time is now right to evacuate his lunch. Into his pants.
- rush him inside. Strip him. Wash him. Re-dress him.
- get to C2 15 minutes late. He’s not happy. Missed out on chance to invite a pal back for a playdate (thank God!)
- ask C2 why he’s wearing ‘those trousers.’
- ‘What do you mean?’ he asks, gormlessly.
- ‘They’re not your trousers,’ I state.
- ‘I lost mine,’ he states back.
- ‘Lost?’ I inquire. ‘How on earth do you ‘lose’ trousers?’
- ‘I took them off for PE and they weren’t there when I went to get dressed.’
- Not happy. His grandad bought him those for Christmas. They were very fashionable jeans (if you’re a Status Quo fan)

Stage 3:
- get home
- give iPhone to C3 to keep him quiet
- take C2 upstairs to read his Stage 7 Magic Key book (Biff and Chip lost the key, then found it again, in case you’re interested)
- it’s like pulling teeth
- ‘A-g-g-g-’
- ‘Again,’ I scream. ‘Again.’
- ‘Do what again, Dad?’
- ‘No, not again, as in ‘I want you to do it again,’ but ‘again’ as in ‘the word you’re trying to read is ‘again”
- Jee-ssuss Kerr-ist on a bike
- get shoes and coats on boys
- in car to get their sister
- got timing wrong. We’re 15 minutes early
- listen to stay-at-home mums going on and on and on about their tedious children and their tedious lives. A bit like this blog, really
- I’m invisible
- C1 appears, chirpy as ever
- ‘What’s for tea?’ she asks
- Oh, s**t! Tea! Totally forgot
- Home
- Run bath.
- Nag C1 to do homework
- Strip C3 for bath
- ‘Owww!’ he yelps
- Hadn’t checked temperature. It’s too hot. Check C3′s bottom. A bit red, but OK. He calls me ‘Silly guy-ee (his word for daddy)
- Shout at C2 to get off the bloody-laptop-and-stop-playing-Club-Penguin-and get-up-here-and-into-this-bath-before-it-gets-cold-NOW
- With both boys in bath, empty contents of can of beans into pan
- Slot two slices of bread into toaster
- Retrieve unwashed plates from  broken dishwasher
- Rinse them under cold tap. No hot water because of bath. Cold will have to do. A few remnants of last night’s tea won’t kill them
- Dish up three plates of beans on toast
- Go to retrieve boys from bath
- Slip and almost break my neck on the mini-lake they’ve splashed onto the bathroom floor
- Dry the boys. Put them into pyjamas
- Sit them down at dinner table
- Call C1 from her homework (‘Have you done it yet?’ ‘Done what?’ ‘Your homework’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Why not’ ‘It’s hard. And I was watching Alvin and the Chipmunks on my iTouch’ ‘Don’t let your mother know, OK?’ ‘OK’)
- Boys are staring at their tea
- C1 stares too
- ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask
- ‘I hate beans,’ says C2
- ‘Especially on toast,’ says C1. ‘They make the bread all mushy.’
- C3 does what he always does and went along with the crowd
- ‘Fine, fine,’ I say. ‘What do you want instead?’
- ‘BISCUITS!’ they shout
- ‘OK. Whatever. Just this once. But don’t tell your mother.’
- ‘With ice cream for afters,’ says C2
- C3 holds onto his ice cream for a little too long, soaking his pyjamas. Another change.
- By now, the washing basket is piling up. I put in a load, when I hear a key in the door.
- The kids rush their mother like love-starved puppies
- It’s over. She’s back. Her turn now.

But my wife looked exhausted.

‘Hard day at the office, dear?’ I jested.

‘You could say that,’ she said.  ‘Make us a cup of tea, would you? And is there wine in the fridge? I’m going to need it.’

She told me about her day. It had been exciting. Meeting new people, getting her head round the new challenges.

I just  brooded, thinking, ‘When are you going to ask about MY day?’

But instead, I handed her the mug of tea and grabbed my coat.

‘I’m going to the pub,’ I said.

I sat alone for the next couple of hours, drank three pints and stared into space. Exhausted from the sheer relentless mundanity of the day I’d had, but also feeling depressed and angry about the life mine had become.

I texted my wife: ‘I feel like we’re in some farcical comedy starring Tom Hanks or Owen Wilson where a couple swap identities. Stop the bus. I want to get off.’

She replied, simply and sympathetically: ‘I didn’t want this, either. But it’s what we’ve got. We’re doing it for them. Love is putting yourself last. Now come home, love.’