The Man Avoiding Housework

It’s week three of lockdown and Rob is finding it increasingly difficult to look busy.

He’s always been masterful at implying to his wife that his job is one of such relentless stress that unless home is a sanctuary of peace he will instantly have a heart attack. This brilliant ploy has exempted him from household chores for the last ten years but is in serious danger of being exposed now that he is forced to ‘work’ from home and therefore to sustain the pretence under Rachel’s close scrutiny. What makes this yet more challenging is that without the lengthy debates in the office kitchenette about such vital issues as the best front three in the league, and without the blue-sky management meetings which are, by unspoken consensus, dragged out for as long as possible, Rob has finished all his work by 11am. It is disconcerting to realise how very little he has achieved during the past decade.

More pressing is the problem of how to fill the yawning chasm of time until 5pm. If he emerges from his makeshift office he will be pounced on and asked to iron something or clean the loo. So he sits tight and whiles away the hours on news sites and social media, always alert for footsteps like a naughty child after lights-out. Whenever he forgets to mute the volume before playing the silly videos sent to him by equally bored friends he winces. Needlessly, as it happens, since Rachel rumbled his ruse on day two after he carelessly revealed his encyclopaedic knowledge of the contents of all the day’s newspapers. She has taken to bringing him cups of coffee very suddenly for the amusement of seeing him feverishly jab his computer screen to make YouTube disappear.

When Rob’s scant workload withers away entirely in the covid-winter of lockdown he slinks out of his sancturary and at once finds important things that must be done around the house, so that when Rachel asks him to vacuum he can’t because he has to turn all the soup-tin labels to the front and alphabetise the herbs and spices. It is at this point that Rachel realises lockdown will have to continue for another six months before Rob runs out of reasons to avoid housework. By which time she will probably have run away to a nunnery.

© C P Jenkinson 19/04/2020

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