Did I Waste My Life as a Housewife?
Shirley Conran gets blamed…
6:30 am, one day in January. I shiver as I put my make-up on in our unheated house. There’s ice on the inside of the window. My knees hurt because I’m kneeling on the uncarpeted floor. Without even grabbing a coffee, I slip and slide down the icy hill to the village, my damp curly-permed hair freezing into Medusa-like ringlets. I meet my lift in his Triumph Herald and we spend the next 75 minutes stuck in slow-moving traffic to get to our respective offices in the city. My hair defrosts causing icy droplets to wend their way down my neck.
I answer the phone, manually process changes to databases, and deal with absolute trivia in return for a monthly pittance. I won’t get home until 6:45 pm and then, if hubby is working, I’ll have to walk 3/4 mile in the cold and dark to see to my ponies before walking back up the bloody hill to throw something in the oven before falling into bed with a hot water bottle.
Where I wanted to be was with my shift-worker husband, my dogs and horses. I wanted to potter around the house, turning it from a freezing new build to a cosy home, to create a place of peace and refuge for my hard-working spouse. I wanted to garden in the sunshine and decadently read trashy novels whenever I felt like it.
