by Sam Holden
Friday 4 January
I should have been a soothsayer. My old company has been taken over by Minto Fellowes (what sort of name is that for a firm of management consultants?) which means great news for the partners – I'm guessing a cool £3–5 million each – but not great news for Sam Holden. In fact, utterly crap news: 'Unfortunately, Minto Fellowes operates a strict non-outsourceable operation, which means that your freelance contract will now terminate at the end of February.' That was pretty much it, no apology, no regret. I tried calling Sir Roger, but he was in Antigua apparently. For the next month. Wanker. After all I've done for him. If it weren't for me discovering that those bastards Chris and David were trying to run down the company before taking it over, he wouldn't have had a firm to sell, and now he's tanning his man boobs on some exclusive beach with his latest bimbo.
At bathtime, I got Daisy and Peter to stick up some of their rubber letters on to the tiles to form the sentence 'Sir Roger is a treacherous bastard', and then took a picture of them pulling faces next to it. (I wanted to put something a lot ruder, but I thought explaining what the words 'tosser' and 'fuckwit' meant was somewhat inappropriate for a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl.) I then emailed the result to my old work buddy Clive, but the email bounced back.
Broke the bad news to Sally when she got back. I nearly didn't, as she looked drained, but worked on the principle that there was no good time to tell her.
'What are we going to do?' she said.
'Well, we've got your income still. It's not as though we're broke.'
'But we were hoping that your consultancy would bring in enough to cover some school fees.'
'I know, I know,' I said, 'and I'll find some more consultancy work.'
An arched Sally eyebrow appeared over a bloodshot eye.
'Really?'
'Really. Honestly, it'll be fine.'
'Oh God, please don't say "it'll be fine".'
'But it will be, I mean it.'
'You always say that as well.'
We stood in silence until Sally turned and opened the fridge. A small jug of off cream fell out and smashed on to the floor, severely splattering her shoes, which I immediately noticed were suede. I watched Sally's shoulders slump. Normally, she would have had a bit of a fit – I'm pretty sure these are currently (or were) her most favoured footwear – but instead she just turned round with a resigned expression and slipped the shoes off, examined them, and then put them in the bin.
'But, but,' I stammered. 'They'll be fine, won't they?'
Sally shook her head and returned to the fridge.
'Is there anything to actually eat in here?'
'Plenty,' I said.
She withdrew a rubbery leek.
'Well, not that, obviously.'
Next came a bowl with something slightly blue in it. God knows what it was, but it followed the shoes, along with several other foodstuffs that were either past their sell-by dates, too colourful or not colourful enough.
'What were you planning to cook us this evening?'
I picked up the phone.
'Fancy a takeaway?' I asked boyishly. 'Chinese? Curry? Pizza?'
'I think I'm going to have a bath and go to bed.'
Sunday 6 January
In the end, the weekend wasn't too bad. We had Nigel and Clare round for lunch today, and even though we barely spoke to each other as we attempted to feed and police the five children, it was good to see old friends, and really great to see that the children got on so well. Both Peter and Daisy, barring the odd minor tantrum, were the perfect little hosts, and shared all their toys, which was nothing short of a miracle.
What wasn't so great was the news that Nigel has been promoted, which now means they can send their bunch to the oh-so-swanky private primary school, and they're also looking to buy a new house. Naturally, I pretended to be delighted for him, but if I'm being honest, I can only be genuinely happy at friends' success if I'm also doing well. Is this just me? I don't think so. Surely it's human nature. At least I hope it is. However, I think I've got a bit too much of whatever it is, as I find my heart also leaps when I hear that a friend has failed. I suspect this makes me a very bad person, but I hope not.
In truth, I want my friends and I all to be equally rich and successful. This evening I told Sally that if I won £5 million on the lottery, I'd give each of our good friends £250,000 so they wouldn't feel so jealous.
'But you should be giving them that money because you were generous and wanted to share your luck,' she said.
'Not at all,' I replied. 'I'd be giving them the money as a sort of bribe to stop them hating me.'
'But that's awful.'
'I don't think so. Besides, I doubt they'd worry about my motive. I wouldn't if someone gave me a quarter of a million quid.'
'Do all men think like this?'
'Yes,' I said confidently. 'It's a nasty place inside the male head.'
Sally grimaced.
'Charming,' she said. 'So basically you think that men hate all men richer than them?'
'Yup.'
'And you only really like the ones who are poorer than you?'
I thought about this.
'Um, yes.'
'In that case,' she said, 'you'd better start looking for some new friends.'
Sally's logic was unpalatably brutal. I am easily the poorest of my friends, but the whole point of me becoming a househusband was that such things didn't matter. However, they still do. I wish I could just find some sort of middle ground between being Total New Dad and Incredibly Rich Dad. The only ground I'm in is some sort of swamp. I feel like sending Sir Roger one of the crappy postcards of the local church and writing 'Wish You Were Here' on it, with an arrow pointing to the graveyard.
Just before I came up, Sally reminded me that we have dinner with her sister Victoria next Friday. This is fine, as Victoria is a lot poorer than us, so I like her immensely despite her pothead vocab. Her boyfriend Rick is some sort of 'landscape designer', who is indeed extremely poor, so I think he may have to become my new best friend.
Tuesday 8 January
Whatever is happening in Ktyteklhdfistan is getting worse. Not that I can possibly know what is actually happening there, because places like Ktyteklhdfistan never appear on the news. (I doubt that they ever did.) However, what I do know is that Sally is working increasingly late, and when she gets home, she bashes away furiously on her laptop. She seems muted and distant. I've never known her like this. She also looks somewhat tired, and I even thought I spotted a grey hair in amongst her normally shampoo-advert-like long brown tresses.
When I ask her what the matter is, all she can say is that things in Ktyteklhdfistan are pretty bad and there's a lot to sort out. She can't be more specific, which is infuriating.
'Surely you can tell me something?' I asked this evening.
She shook her head as she drained her third glass of wine. (Another worrying development – she's beginning to drink as much as me.)
'Not even a little bit?'
'Nope.'
'Is the world going to end? Have they got nukes?'
Worryingly, Sally paused.
'Put it this way,' she sighed. 'The country is a fucking mess. That's about the politest way I can put it.'
(Oh dear. Swearing like me as well.)
I felt a little helpless. After all, there was not a lot I could say or do.
'I know,' I said eventually.
'What?'
'Perhaps they need some management consultants.'
Sally looked at me, wide-eyed.
'Are you being serious?'
'Of course not!' I lied.
Thursday 10 January
I'm ruing my latest 'it'll be fine'. There is no consultancy work out there, not even for me, the great whistleblower who saved Sir Roger's august firm of Musker Walsh and Sloss (Consultants) Ltd. I am feeling increasingly bitter about this, perhaps more so than when I lost my job.
I'm also feeling a bit guilty that I'
ve taken this out on Peter and Daisy. After picking up Peter from school and Daisy from playgroup, the rest of the day was a bit of a washout. Literally, because it was raining, and metaphorically because everything I attempted to do with them felt half-hearted. They picked up on my mood immediately, and as a result, they were bolshy. Example: painting. Normally they love painting, but today they showed a marked reluctance.
'Painting's boring,' said Peter after I had plonked the paints and brushes bad-temperedly down in front of him on the kitchen table.
'But you like painting.'
'No I don't.'
Peter's reluctance was copied by Daisy, who shook her head and went 'no' each time I tried to put a paintbrush in her hand. Normally she is good for a squiggle or two, but today she just flung the paintbrush to the floor. I then told her this was naughty, and she burst into tears.
'Mummy!' she kept crying.
'Mummy's at work,' I shouted.
'I want my mummy!' started Peter.
Gritted teeth.
'Mummy is not here,' I said slowly.
Cue large shouting match which saw me leave them alone in the kitchen while I read the paper in the living room. Or rather, I pretended to read the paper as all I could concentrate on was the ceaseless bellyaching.
'Just get on and paint!' I shouted, knowing that this would only infuriate them, but by now I was feeling bloody-minded.
'Mummy!'
'I don't want to do painting!'
'Mummy!'
And so on. All because I had started them off badly. It was my fault, I knew it, but I find it impossible to hide my mood from them. Perhaps I should be more professional, and not take my problems to 'work', but they should realise that Daddy is human as well, even if not a particularly brilliant one. Later, partly out of guilt, but more because I actually wanted to, I gave them both some huge cuddles on the sofa, and order was restored.
My whole life is stretching in front of me, and from here it looks like something Daisy would have painted had she been willing – a bloody mess, a meaningless bunch of squiggles and splodges that add up to very little, but something which other people must be polite about. I'll be able to see it in my friends' eyes, the same look that I give Daisy and Peter when I admire their artwork. And there'll be the same words as well – the over enthusiastic 'well dones' and 'good for yous'. But the big difference between the children and me is that they're proud of what they do. I just pretend to be.
Oh God. This is all getting self-pitying and revolting. Dinner at Victoria's tomorrow night – there had better not be any rich people there.
Sunday 13 January
Dinner at Victoria's was so much better than I expected. So so much better. In fact, potentially life-changing. I must do my best not to get too excited. But I can't help it, and I doubt anybody would be able to keep calm in my circumstances. I've gone from the equivalent of nul points to the cusp of Eurovision greatness in just a few days, and if this thing pays off, boy will it pay off.
Anyway, to begin at the beginning. The assembled looked pretty much as I had feared – absurd facial hair, clothes too young for the bodies therein – but there was one of them towards whom I immediately gravitated. Despite having those standard 'I'm alternative, me' rectangular glasses, and an inexcusable ponytail (I really thought ponytails had been collectively shorn in about 1997), he looked a little more bright-eyed and less stoned than the rest of Victoria's friends.
It turned out he was called Dom Simons, and he was a TV producer. (I should have guessed.) Normally, I have little time for people in the media. Most of them are full of crap, and think they know exactly how the world works with their glib categorisations and zeitgeisty spiel, and sure enough, Dom seemed no exception. Also, like most media people, he believed that his voice was the only one worth listening to, and he spent the first ten minutes telling me all about himself. Still, he was entertaining enough, and beneath the self-puffery there seemed to beat the heart of a genuinely intelligent and interesting bloke.
Eventually, he asked me what I did. I'm always tempted to lie at this point, because saying 'I'm a househusband' sounds so wet. In fact, I've practised saying it so many times, I feel like an actor who's been asked to play James Bond, and is hung up on how to say, 'The name's Bond, James Bond.' I've tried saying it in a sort of macho way, but that just sounds pathetic. On this occasion, I just kind of blurted out:
'ActuallyI'mahousehusband.'
'What was that?'
'A househusband. You know, I stay at home and look after the children.'
Dom's eyes bulged roundly behind his rectangular frames.
'Wow,' he said. 'That's awesome.'
'Awesome? Well, if you think nappies are awesome, think again.'
Dom's glasses slipped down his nose a little. He looked genuinely 100 per cent surprised.
'How . . . but how . . . how did it happen? I mean did you choose to do this? Or what?'
'Well it's quite simple. I got sacked. And then my wife decided that she would go back to work, because her job was more interesting, and she thought in these days of sexual equality there was no reason why she shouldn't be the breadwinner.'
I was aware, even as I was saying all this, that I had said it a thousand times before.
Another wow from Dominic, and then: 'So what did you do before then?'
This is getting increasingly common. When I tell most blokes that I'm a househusband, they find it so beyond their ken that they then ask what I used to do.
'I was a management consultant.'
'OK,' said Dom, manfully struggling to work out what to say next. 'And, um, how did you find that?' he asked.
'To tell the truth I enjoyed it.'
'D'you miss it?'
I chewed this over along with a stale crisp. Victoria's crisps are always stale. Why is that?
'I miss the office life,' I said. 'I don't miss the politics. I suppose what I miss most of all is making some sort of professional impact. You know, with management consultancy, you're actually going to a firm, and within a few weeks you've made them more profitable, and you've really made a huge difference.'
'I thought you lot just sacked people.'
I waggled my finger in a vaguely schoolmasterly way.
'Aha! A common misconception,' I replied playfully, although in truth I was a little narked. It's so unfair that everybody thinks that management consultants just sack people in order to make companies look profitable. When we went to some big insurance firm down in Poole, I remember recommending that they should actually employ more people. I told all this to Dom, who seemed to take it on board. Well, he sorted of nodded a bit, before asking me whether I still kept my hand in.
'I do a bit of consultancy from time to time,' I said sheepishly. 'Good for staying in the loop, that sort of thing.'
More absent-minded nodding. I could tell that I was beginning to bore him. (This is something else that seems to be happening more often. Either I really have got more boring, or I have always been boring, and am now far more sensitive.) My next conversational gambit was therefore born out of desperation.
'But you know what?' I asked. 'I think I'd make the subject of a great TV programme.'
This time Dom's eyes popped open so widely that they actually went beyond his frames, making it look as though he had two Tube logos stuck on his face.
'You?' he spluttered on his mulled wine.
'Why not? You know, a real-life documentary of a househusband. The trials and tribulations of an ordinary bloke stuck in a woman's job.'
More bulging. It was hardly surprising – the idea was not exactly well thought out, and had only been voiced in order to make conversation.
'Well, it's, um, very interesting,' said Dom.
'You think so?'
'Yesssss,' he said convincingly. 'But I think it needs another element, you know, a celebrity or something.'
A celebrity. Why did it always have to be a celebrity? What right do celebrities have to lecture us? The other
night I caught the end of some female comedian presenting a programme on the British Empire. What did she know about it? Precisely nothing. About as much as my old history tutor knows about situation comedy. In fact, probably less than that. And then, in the midst of my seethe about celebs, a brainwave.
'Why not a programme about me trying to bring up my children according to the techniques of management consultancy?'
'What?'
Excitedly, I told Dom all about the Holden Childcare Programme, and how I had attempted to raise Daisy and Peter using it.
'Did it work?' Dom asked.
'Er, no,' I admitted sheepishly. 'So perhaps the idea isn't really a flyer after all.'
'Well, that doesn't technically matter,' said Dom.
'What doesn't?'
'Whether it worked or not.'
'Why not?'
'Well, truth should never get in the way of good factual entertainment.'
Now it was the turn of my eyes to bulge.
'I thought that only applied to travel writing.'
Dom laughed a little.
'You know all those makeover programmes?'
'Sort of.'
(I didn't want to admit that I knew them a little too well. They're on when I cook dinner.)
'The ones in which they make a new you, or a new house, all that crap.'
'Yes, I know.'
'Well, they're a load of shit.'
'Really?'
'Yup, completely made up.'
'How can you be so sure?' I asked.
'I make the bloody things.'
My turn to splutter on mulled wine.
'Really?'
'Yup.'
Dom then gave me a list of the programmes he had made, most of which I had either heard of, or had indeed watched.
'Remember the one where that old bag had a tummy tuck?'
'Sure,' I replied. 'That was incredible – she looked so much better.'
'Well, she refused to have the surgery.'
'But I thought I saw her being operated on.'
'Stock footage.'
'But she looked thinner. I mean, her tummy had disappeared.'
'We just Photoshopped it out.'