I'M ASKING YOU

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 304, 20 April 1945, Page 12

I'M ASKING YOU

(Written for "The Listener" by

UNA

CRAIG

WO things happened to me last week. Tom proposed and the Automatic Home Aids Co. Ltd. offered me a job as showroom receptionist. I was given a few days to think over both propositions. So I decided to go and stay with my sister out in suburbia for what I believed would be a short period of quiet reflection. The day after I arrived my sister went down with the ‘flu. I had to take things over. Next day the youngest child spilt boil-

ing water over his foot and the hotwater system went wrong, In that order. I nursed my sister, attended to the foot, and rang the plumber. When I finally got him he said he might be able to come in about a month’s time if I were lucky. I said thank. you, but I’d try someone else. He wished me luck in a decidedly sarcastic voice and I decided then and there that I did not like plumbers, I never had and never would. I had to get up verv early every

‘morning so that I could find time enough to cook breakfast, cut lunches, with everyone liking a different filling for their sandwiches and nothing much available to fill them with, wash the patient, do the dishes, water the carrots because there hadn’t been any rain and one had to grow one’s own vegetables these days on account of war or vitamins or something or both, make the beds, sweep the floors, clean the bath and basin, and go the messages before lunch, a5 x * MY sister lives in a small house on the hill. It is quite a walk from the back door to the gate, and quite a walk to the shops too. All uphill coming back. One always has a load, coming back. It took me at least an hour to do the shopping, and I had to hurry because most of the shops had adopted the current fashion of shutting at lunchtime. As they all seemed to shut at different times in a shockingly irresponsible manner, I was sometimes caught and had to go back after lunch to collect the remnants of my shopping. I had never thought a great deal about the work done by packhorses, oxen, mules, camels, etc., having always more or less taken it for granted. But, now I have a fellow-feeling stirring within me. I also know now why a camel has that look of cultivated smugness. He has to pretend he likes being a beast of burden,.when all the time he loathes the whole beastly business. After three days of housekeeping for my sister J began to look a bit like that. % * * ON Monday I had to do the washing on top of all the other regular things

and, because my brother-in-law works overtime in order to earn enough money to keep things going, he had not had time to cut any fuel. So I set to work with an axe, After two pieces of wood had made violent contact with my face, I desisted and had recourse to a pile of garden refuse which burned so quickly that I had to stand shoving the beastly stuff into the copper fireplace every other minute. Once when the telephone rang because a friend of my sister called up to ask how she was getting on and took 20 minutes to tell me how bad she had

been herself last month with boils in her ears, I got back to the wash-house to find that I had left the tap running and there was water all over the floor and cascading out across the back porch; The secondyoungest was having a glorious time in the flood with Peter the Pup acting first assistant with abandoned gusto. I thought of all the things I should like to sayand said them. I can’t help it is the second-youngest did pick up a phrase or two. I have never professed to be the

angel in anyone's house. It is just that, you are not deed to managing, my sister informed me from the sanctuary of her bedclothes. : * ® * HAD just finished mopping up the floor and was turning over in my mind what I should have for lunch, for dinner, and to-morrow’s breakfast, so that I could make out my burden-list, when the baker arrived looking like a cross between a fawning spaniel, and a lioness guarding her young. He said he was asking all the customers to cooperate with the bakers by providing suitable receptacles for bread at the front gate so as to save time by eliminating back-door delivery. Well; I was just in the right mood for him. I looked at him with what I felt was a feverish and accusing eye (the other was always on/the clock) and said that it seemed to me everyone in this world was being considered except the housewife and did he think she had nothing better to do than go dashing backwards and forwards to the front gate to bring in the milk, the mail, the newspaper, the bread, to say nothing of the rubbish ‘tin? And did he stop to wonder who was going to make a suitable receptacle for his confounded bread? And didn’t he know about birds and germs and the corns on housewives’ feet? I was quite beginning to enjoy my own indignant fervour when I noticed that he had a patient, far-away look in his eye and that he was lolling down on one leg waiting with a quiet forbearance for me to cease. "Well!" I snapped. "What do you say to all that?" (continued on next page)

ee (continued from previous page) "We're just asking the customers to co-operate," he reiterated, just as if I had been saying’ nothing for the past five minutes. "There’s a war on, you know. Everyone should be wring, to do their bit." That was supposed to Walco me feel like a worm. Perhaps it did. But I was thinking of after the war. It is easier to surrender one’s rights than to recover them. I was also thinking of something else by this time. "Oh, very well," I said to the baker and went inside. * By Ed I'VE decided. Someone else can marry Tom and fetch and carry and boost ta population figures. I’m going to take the job with the Automatic Home Aids Co. Ltd. I think receptionist would be a nice quiet dignified sort of occupation. Don’t you?