How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) Kathy Lette (books recommended by bts txt) 📖

7.57: Finally have one leg threaded into tights when son pokes head around bedroom door. He’s just remembered he has rugby today. ‘Rugby! You tell me that now?!!’ I scream, rummaging through drawers, cupboards, laundry baskets, washing machines in frantic search for sports kit.

‘Where the hell’s your father?’

‘Shaving.’

In a moment of blinding insight, I peek into Jamie’s gym bag. There’s something down there, something reeking and harbouring wildlife. Prod. It’s brittle with mud but at least it isn’t moving. What is it? A science experiment? When it doesn’t bite me, realize that it is indeed Jamie’s sports kit. No time to wash it. Spray it with perfume and stuff it back in again.

8.05: Fifteen minutes left for me to manoeuvre my way though peak hour traffic, drop off two kids at two different schools, find a spot in the school car park and get to my meeting with the headmaster about the promotion. Nearly out the door, bags and books in hand, teeth brushed, lunches packed, when there’s a last-minute request for excursion money. Then I’m rummaging again, in bags, drawers, coat pockets. End up stealing neighbour’s milk money.

‘Where the hell’s your father?’ comes my maternal mantra as I grope for keys to lock the front door.

‘I’m right here, kitten.’

‘Rory! Where the hell have you been all bloody morning?’

‘I knew I’d just get under your feet. You’re so brilliant at multi-tasking!’

Monday evening

‘Well?’ Jazz demands. She’s on the phone the nanosecond I get home from school. ‘Did Rory help you get to your meeting on time?’

‘Maybe women are just better at multi-tasking?’ I venture as I dust skirting boards. Dust? Who am I kidding? My skirting boards have topsoil. ‘I know from teaching that boys definitely don’t have the same finely tuned motor skills . . .’

‘Let me get this straight, Cassie. Even though your husband can unhook a lace bustier with one hand in the dark, you think he’s too clumsy to screw on a milk bottle top? Don’t tell me you were late for your meeting?’

‘’Fraid so. And believe me, my hideous Headmaster accepts no excuse. He won’t even take a doctor’s sick-note because he says that if you’re well enough to go to the doctor, then you’re well enough to go to school,’ I say, phone cradled to my ear as I hunt through the fridge for food that hasn’t turned to penicillin. ‘Anyway, talking about the Husband Hall of Shame, did you confront that low-life hubby of yours about his sexual multi-tasking?’

‘Not yet. I’m still in shock. I don’t know whether to vent my spleen or rupture his. I did get a call from the UN though, asking me to measure him for his bulletproof vest. They wanted me to measure him standing and then “sitting when erect”.’

‘Gosh! Have you got a tape measure big enough?’ I ask facetiously as I attack the downstairs bathroom basin.

‘And when I was measuring him . . . well, I didn’t measure quite correctly.’

‘Revenge of the Human Rights surgeon’s wife. You’re evil, Mrs Studlands,’ I cackle, chipping away at Rory’s beard stubble which enamels the porcelain.

‘I’m making light of it, Cass, but I have been feeling so awful. I can’t sleep. I have headaches, depression . . . and I’m so hot I’m creating my own micro-climate here!’

‘Really? Should weather girls start including you in their reports? East Anglia, cold and windy. Jasmine Jardine, humid and sticky with warm front approaching.’

‘Don’t joke. I’ve made an appointment with the doctor even though I’m sure it’s just stress. I wish I were more like you, Cass. You have the patience of a saint.’

‘No. Two kids, a husband, a job and seven hundred animals to feed. That’s what I’ve got.’

‘Well, just remind that hulking great hubby of yours to help you more, okay?’

Tuesday morning

Rory’s helping method is to set the clock an hour earlier.

‘The early worm gets eaten by the bird,’ my hubby mutters groggily, resetting the snooze alarm and rolling over.

Still, by 7.55 I am out of the door. Breathe a sigh of deep relief. Will make it to the meeting!

‘Bye, tiger,’ Rory waves as he slides into his Jeep.

‘Rory! I thought you were doing the school run today? I have that interview with Scroope.’

‘But I have a seminar. It’s recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats. Anyway the kids’ schools are on your route, Cass. Oh, and could you drop off Mrs Pinkerton’s Doberman in St John’s Wood? I mean, it’s right on your way.’

Oh no. Not the Hound of the Baskervilles. ‘But—’

‘That’s what I love about you modern women. You really can Do It All,’ he beams, blowing a kiss.

At eight o’clock, Rory roars off, ‘Stairway To Heaven’ blasting from both speakers.

Rory always seems to get a parking spot right outside our house whereas I can only ever find a space so far away I actually contemplate catching a taxi to my car each morning. Set off on a cross-country trek to find my Honda, me, the kids and the Doberman – with a compass and a list of edible berries.

Whoever wrote that bull about it being better to travel hopefully than to arrive has never done a school run.

The children start to fight about who gets to sit in the front. Solve battle by ordering them both into the back and strapping the Doberman into the passenger seat. It’s a mystery of parenthood that your son can give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to stray, worm-riddled dogs, share a piece of rechewed gum from a kid with bronchitis and pick his nose and eat it on a regular basis, yet won’t sit next to his sister because of ‘Girl Germs’.

The kids are at each other’s throats by the end of the street. This chiefly entails trying to push each other, or sometimes me, out of the car windows. I don’t think the Highway Code has a clause about not pushing the driver out of a moving vehicle because no one with a rational mind would ever imagine this as a possibility. Traffic