TALES OF THE LOCKDOWN

Generally, lockdown is going pretty well for me. I’m using my time to grow spiritually and to become a better person. This usually involves quelling the desire to scream at the other members of my household. Thank god the weather’s been good, I can just go out and yell at the cherry blossom instead.

My teenage daughter, Milana, is particularly benefiting from my desire to improve myself. Just now I manage to avoid yelling at her “Do the fucking dishes!!!” and thereby averted an evening of door slammings and mental slash emotional breakdowns.

We’ve just eaten a lovely dinner, in complete silence, which I feel is a success as no tirade of abuse is hurled about how disgusting my cooking is. Milana has picked up her phone and raced up the stairs to her room, where like Schrodinger’s Cat she may or may not exist for most of the lockdown.

I rinse the dishes and put them by the sink, horror of horrors, the dishwasher is broken! Then I go out to the garden to cry. After twenty minutes of weeping into the willow tree, I come back in to discover the dishes have NOT been done.

I sigh heavily and go to the bottom of the stairs with an impending sense of doom. 'Milana, can you please do the dishes, darling?' I call to her like a wooer.

I slowly count to ten, no reply.

'Milaaaannaa, it’s your turn to do the dishes.' This is me shouting up the stairs in a sing-song voice into the empty void beyond. I’m trying to keep it light and friendly but it cracks slightly at the end when I realise the only reply I will get is the barely perceptible echo of my increasingly high pitched voice.

I wander over to the fridge and open the Chablis.

Twenty minutes later: 'MILANA! PLEASE! THE DISHES ARE STILL NOT DONE!.'

By this point I shakily pour myself another glass of wine, hoping against hope that it will calm my nerves and stop me stomping up the stairs, swinging open the door without knocking and shouting all the things my mother used to shout at me at exactly the same age - I know that if I do this I will deeply regret it later, as I will have proven yet again that I am no better at this gig than my own mother.

I manage to quell the urge and instead wander into my husband’s office so I can complain to him about how hard done by I feel to have a daughter who not only never listens to me but also thinks I’m ridiculous in every way.

My husband, increasingly determined to escape the oestrogen-saturated space sits with his headphones on, at the iMac, pretending to work.

“Jeremy, she won’t do the dishes, I don’t know what to do,' I say wringing my hands like a bad thespian actor

'What?' he says, taking off the headphones.

Does no one in this house bloody listen to me!

I don’t say this. Instead, I sigh (I think it’s still okay to be passive-aggressive when you’re growing spiritually) and say: 'Milana. She’s doing that power game thing with me again, you know, when she ignores me and ignores me until I lose it and start shouting at her. Well, I’m not going to do it this time, I’ll show her. I can play this game too.'

Jeremy looks at me with a tormented ‘please give me five minutes peace’ look on his face.

'Muuuuummm!'

Both our heads whip round to stare at the door. Milana comes bouncing in all rosy-cheeked and smiley, for once looking younger than her fourteen years. 'I just took the dog for a walk and I’ll start on the dishes now. Sorry, we were gone so long, she was having so much fun in the park.'

She bounds out again and I hear the tap running and the clanging of dishes. I turn to Jeremy who is trying not to smirk. 'Oh stop it,' I say. 'How was I supposed to know she wasn’t upstairs? She never takes the dog for a walk.'