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05-04-2014, 01:37 AM
Always go to bed on an argument - tips for the domestically challenged
By DEBORAH ROSS
Some women may have amazing parenting skills, harmonious marital relationships, perfectly coordinated wardrobes and clean and tidy homes - but the truth is, the majority of us do not.
If you haven't been able to find a pair of matching socks in your laundry basket for the last five years, have deliberately sat your children in front of the TV to avoid doing something creative with glitter, have tried to pass off shop-bought cakes as your own culinary achievements - and sometimes make cups of instant coffee by running your mug under the hot tap - you could be in line for membership of the Non-Domestic Goddess Club (GB), founded by the Mail's columnist, Deborah Ross.
In this, an exclusive extract from her new book, Always Go To Bed On An Argument, Deborah shares her top tips for the domestically challenged:
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/domesticCart2609_468x342.jpg
The first art of resentful cooking
Home cooking, as Nigella Lawson has so often pointed out, is not about getting fancy recipes absolutely right.
It's about love, warmth, sitting around the table as a family and talking about the day, or would be except in those instances when you're just not up to it, which may be quite often.
As such, we would like to direct you to The Resentful Kitchen*, the cookbook and Non Domestic Goddess Club (NDGC) publication which remains the definitive work on how to go about it bitterly while bashing pans around in an exceedingly grudging and furious manner.
The following recipe for omelette and salad is perfect for those times when it's late, you've just got in, the last thing you want to do is prepare a meal, but there they all are, looking up at you expectantly, as if you might have perfectly chargrilled little fillet steaks down your socks and a heavenly meringue confection in your bra.
"Here it is, guys! Thanks for waiting!"
The Resentful Kitchen is available from all bad-tempered bookshops.
Ingredients: Eggs; lettuce; a cucumber, sliced, but only if you feel you can use a knife without stabbing someone through the heart with it.
Method: First, set face to somewhere between cross and really, really cross. Prepare salad by shredding lettuce. (This can often be done just by looking at it).
If using cucumber, and wishing to avoid sharp knife owing to homicidal urges, rip it apart with your bare hands.
Crack eggs on teeth, then beat eggs with a phenomenal amount of anger and spite.
Incinerate the lot in a frying pan while hurling insults. Serve in front of the telly, as the last thing you want to hear about is their day - which is never that interesting anyway.
Serving Suggestions: Good accompaniments include your own body weight in alcohol, and an icy: 'Happy now?'
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/disciplinexDM2609_468x581.jpg
Ten facts about children
1) The more effort you put into a child's packed lunch - especially if it has meant a midnight trip to the all-night garage for supplies - the less chance it will be eaten.
2) A teenage girl will not be fully happy with her attire unless she has caught you wincing. (Gasping is better, but wincing will do.)
3) A child shown one of your old, treasured Ladybird books will say: 'What, they go and get their feet measured in a shoe shop and that's the story, that's it?'
4) The school play will always have one child who knows all the lines, shouting into the faces of those who don't.
5) No boy will ever say: "But, Mum, I don't want you wasting your hard- earned money on those expensive football boots.
"The cheaper ones will do."
6) No child has ever resented their mother for stealing his or her birthday money to pay the milkman, and anyway it's the elves that do it.
7) The more you press an outer garment on a child the more he or she will resist.
8) A child's interest in tractors and dinosaurs will persist long after your interest has waned.
9) Swimming goggles will always leak or be too tight, and it will somehow always be your fault.
10) A child's school bag will always contain, along with the rotting organic matter of unknown origin, four out-of-date letters saying how important it is that you come to the meeting that was two months ago, as well as a note saying a child in the class has nits, and we're not saying it's your child exactly, but do you get our drift?
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/marriedDM2609_800x225.jpg
Entertaining younger children
Younger children are small and can need a lot of care. Many people find this annoying.
Younger children also like to play games - which many people find annoying, too.
However, as our members agree, there are tried and tested ways to deal with these irritations.
One excellent tip is to hide increasing amounts of your money under the board during Monopoly, which almost guarantees you'll be out in no time.
"Oh, look. Can you credit it? I'm bust already."
When it comes to Ludo or Snakes & Ladders there may be no alternative but to swallow the dice. As a rule of thumb, it is wise to play to lose.
Don't be afraid to ask other people, like grandparents, to muck in when it comes to caring for your children. Although it will break your heart, you may wish to leave the children with their grandparents all day.
You may even dispatch them with a small overnight bag, just in case you are hard-pressed to pick them up any time in the near future.
Grandparents may protest and say, 'Helping out is one thing', or 'This is ridiculous', 'Can't it wait until your father is out of intensive care?' or 'We are too old to be running after little ones', but they are just being silly.
For a start, there are lots of things you can do with children sitting down, like kayaking. Do see the children in, if you want, but sometimes it just makes sense to put them on the doorstep, ring the bell and run. 'Surprise, Grandma!'
Alternatively, there are always childminders, and a good childminder is worth her weight in gold.
Get a list of registered childminders from your local council, and when you meet each one, ask yourself the following questions: Is she friendly and accessible?
Are the children in her care encouraged to play? Would she be happy to have the kids for several months at a time?
Should the first childminder on the list turn out to be a chain-smoker with a Doberman and a condemned electric fire in her 29th-floor flat with no fire escape, do not dismiss her there and then, especially if she is available to start that very afternoon.
It is easy to be prejudiced against such people, but she may be a lovely person under all those piercings and tattoos.
Another option is a nanny.
Ever since the whole Jude/nanny/Sienna business, the general thinking among mothers is that a plain nanny without a jot of sexual allure is quite the best kind.
A plain one with halitosis, hairy legs and disturbing habits is an even better kind.
However, check and double check her CV.
She may say she can burp the Westminster chimes and doesn't believe in deodorant, but unless you talk to her previous employers, how can you be really sure?
If she also has stiff little hairs on her chin, possibly sprouting from a wart, chances are she'll be quite pricey.
In fact, a nanny like that can more or less write her own ticket.
Men are better than women at many things - that's a fact
It is now commonplace for women to more or less say: 'Men, what a shower.' They will then go on to rubbish them.
They are useless, unnecessary, annoying. They bite the cheese and then put it back in the fridge.
They have no idea who their children's teachers are. They sometimes have no idea who their children are.
"Who is this small person eating Shreddies at the breakfast table this morning? Have we met?"
They never stack or unstack the dishwasher, imagining what? That elves do it in the middle of the night?
And so on and so on, proving what exactly? That women are superior in every way? That men would be lost without them? This is absurd.
Indeed, there are many things which men can do well that women simply can't, and what is the point in pretending otherwise?
Come on, sisters, face it, men are superior in many, many respects. Not yet convinced? Try the following for size:
Have you ever met a woman who falls asleep in front of the television at 9pm, opens her eyes briefly at 10ish, says: "I don't know what you see in Desperate Housewives /ER/Lost," wakes up at 2am, stumbles off to bed, ricochets noisily off the wardrobe, then scratches her private parts before falling flat on her back, where she will spend the rest of the night making a noise alternating between an oncoming train and a peculiar nasal whinnying? Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/domestic2Cart2609_468x348.jpg
Have you ever met a woman who refuses to call a plumber when the pipe behind the washing machine develops a leak, and instead keeps insisting: "I'll fix it, I'll fix it," although when she does get round to it, several months later, bumbles around so clumsily she causes a second leak, but still will not call a plumber and still keeps insisting: "I can fix it," while looking daggers at you, you great big nag.
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who, when driving, has punched her navigator full in the face for simply reading the map upside down, and so now we are miles from anywhere and are going to be really late, so well done you, hope you're proud of yourself?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who will buy her elderly, infirm father a machine for stripping wallpaper for his 87th birthday, on the grounds that 'B&Q was on my way home' and 'What do you mean "try another shop" ... when I'd been to one already'?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who has a secret 'short cut' that is actually longer than the long cut but who will persist in proudly calling it 'my short cut', even though all stopwatches and even the use of two cars to see who gets home first, prove otherwise, none of which count 'because I got caught behind a milk float'?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who, in spite of her astonishing ability to multi-task - and even multi-task while multi-tasking - can NOT keep up with the plot of a Mafia film, and so will annoy everybody by saying over and over: 'I don't understand who killed Frankie, or why'?
Actually, there are many women who are like this. This, sisters, we are good at. You might even say we excel.
Christmas stress-busting tips
Quit your job before the office party. It will save time later. Get your stories straight.
"Mummy, why does Father Christmas use the same wrapping paper as you?"
"Because we share the same extremely good taste, darling."
Avoid any gadgety shops unless you want your head sliced off by a demo helicopter.
Goats and honeybees are nice thoughts, but hell to wrap and then hell to keep secret.
Keep the scissors and Sellotape for your use only (if necessary, hide in pants).
Try not to get too competitive about cards, always eyeing up how many others have received, but it's sensible to send yourself a good number.
Gift tokens, gift tokens, gift tokens. (Although they always seem like a feeble present to give in early December, by Christmas Eve they are beginning to look pretty cool.)
Should a sexual encounter come your way, remove scissors and Sellotape from pants.
The truth about summer holidays
Listen, why stay at home not getting on when you can all drive thousands of miles across France to spend two weeks together not getting on? You know it makes sense.
It's tempting to go on separate holidays but, alas, the kids will always find you in the end.
Here are the things no child has ever been heard to say on holiday:
"I could sit in the back of this car for ever."
"I'll write a postcard to Grandma." "Please could you suncream me? I will stand very still. Oops, I think you have missed a bit there."
"I've probably had enough ice-cream for one day."
"Any chance of fitting in a medieval church this afternoon?" "I've run out of books to read."
"I'm bushed; I think I'll turn in and leave you adults to it." "I feel like a shower."
"I'll just unpack and put everything carefully away. (Did you bring the fragranced drawerliners?)"
"I'll just write another postcard to Grandma; you know how Grandma loves postcards."
"Oh, no. Not another water park." "I'll be in in a minute; I've just got to brush all this sand off."
2Is it OK if I hang my trunks out to dry?"
And, of course: "I'll get it, Mum; it's your holiday, too."
Extracted from Always Go To Bed On An Argument by Deborah Ross, published by Profile on October 11 at £9.99. ° Deborah Ross
By DEBORAH ROSS
Some women may have amazing parenting skills, harmonious marital relationships, perfectly coordinated wardrobes and clean and tidy homes - but the truth is, the majority of us do not.
If you haven't been able to find a pair of matching socks in your laundry basket for the last five years, have deliberately sat your children in front of the TV to avoid doing something creative with glitter, have tried to pass off shop-bought cakes as your own culinary achievements - and sometimes make cups of instant coffee by running your mug under the hot tap - you could be in line for membership of the Non-Domestic Goddess Club (GB), founded by the Mail's columnist, Deborah Ross.
In this, an exclusive extract from her new book, Always Go To Bed On An Argument, Deborah shares her top tips for the domestically challenged:
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/domesticCart2609_468x342.jpg
The first art of resentful cooking
Home cooking, as Nigella Lawson has so often pointed out, is not about getting fancy recipes absolutely right.
It's about love, warmth, sitting around the table as a family and talking about the day, or would be except in those instances when you're just not up to it, which may be quite often.
As such, we would like to direct you to The Resentful Kitchen*, the cookbook and Non Domestic Goddess Club (NDGC) publication which remains the definitive work on how to go about it bitterly while bashing pans around in an exceedingly grudging and furious manner.
The following recipe for omelette and salad is perfect for those times when it's late, you've just got in, the last thing you want to do is prepare a meal, but there they all are, looking up at you expectantly, as if you might have perfectly chargrilled little fillet steaks down your socks and a heavenly meringue confection in your bra.
"Here it is, guys! Thanks for waiting!"
The Resentful Kitchen is available from all bad-tempered bookshops.
Ingredients: Eggs; lettuce; a cucumber, sliced, but only if you feel you can use a knife without stabbing someone through the heart with it.
Method: First, set face to somewhere between cross and really, really cross. Prepare salad by shredding lettuce. (This can often be done just by looking at it).
If using cucumber, and wishing to avoid sharp knife owing to homicidal urges, rip it apart with your bare hands.
Crack eggs on teeth, then beat eggs with a phenomenal amount of anger and spite.
Incinerate the lot in a frying pan while hurling insults. Serve in front of the telly, as the last thing you want to hear about is their day - which is never that interesting anyway.
Serving Suggestions: Good accompaniments include your own body weight in alcohol, and an icy: 'Happy now?'
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/disciplinexDM2609_468x581.jpg
Ten facts about children
1) The more effort you put into a child's packed lunch - especially if it has meant a midnight trip to the all-night garage for supplies - the less chance it will be eaten.
2) A teenage girl will not be fully happy with her attire unless she has caught you wincing. (Gasping is better, but wincing will do.)
3) A child shown one of your old, treasured Ladybird books will say: 'What, they go and get their feet measured in a shoe shop and that's the story, that's it?'
4) The school play will always have one child who knows all the lines, shouting into the faces of those who don't.
5) No boy will ever say: "But, Mum, I don't want you wasting your hard- earned money on those expensive football boots.
"The cheaper ones will do."
6) No child has ever resented their mother for stealing his or her birthday money to pay the milkman, and anyway it's the elves that do it.
7) The more you press an outer garment on a child the more he or she will resist.
8) A child's interest in tractors and dinosaurs will persist long after your interest has waned.
9) Swimming goggles will always leak or be too tight, and it will somehow always be your fault.
10) A child's school bag will always contain, along with the rotting organic matter of unknown origin, four out-of-date letters saying how important it is that you come to the meeting that was two months ago, as well as a note saying a child in the class has nits, and we're not saying it's your child exactly, but do you get our drift?
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/marriedDM2609_800x225.jpg
Entertaining younger children
Younger children are small and can need a lot of care. Many people find this annoying.
Younger children also like to play games - which many people find annoying, too.
However, as our members agree, there are tried and tested ways to deal with these irritations.
One excellent tip is to hide increasing amounts of your money under the board during Monopoly, which almost guarantees you'll be out in no time.
"Oh, look. Can you credit it? I'm bust already."
When it comes to Ludo or Snakes & Ladders there may be no alternative but to swallow the dice. As a rule of thumb, it is wise to play to lose.
Don't be afraid to ask other people, like grandparents, to muck in when it comes to caring for your children. Although it will break your heart, you may wish to leave the children with their grandparents all day.
You may even dispatch them with a small overnight bag, just in case you are hard-pressed to pick them up any time in the near future.
Grandparents may protest and say, 'Helping out is one thing', or 'This is ridiculous', 'Can't it wait until your father is out of intensive care?' or 'We are too old to be running after little ones', but they are just being silly.
For a start, there are lots of things you can do with children sitting down, like kayaking. Do see the children in, if you want, but sometimes it just makes sense to put them on the doorstep, ring the bell and run. 'Surprise, Grandma!'
Alternatively, there are always childminders, and a good childminder is worth her weight in gold.
Get a list of registered childminders from your local council, and when you meet each one, ask yourself the following questions: Is she friendly and accessible?
Are the children in her care encouraged to play? Would she be happy to have the kids for several months at a time?
Should the first childminder on the list turn out to be a chain-smoker with a Doberman and a condemned electric fire in her 29th-floor flat with no fire escape, do not dismiss her there and then, especially if she is available to start that very afternoon.
It is easy to be prejudiced against such people, but she may be a lovely person under all those piercings and tattoos.
Another option is a nanny.
Ever since the whole Jude/nanny/Sienna business, the general thinking among mothers is that a plain nanny without a jot of sexual allure is quite the best kind.
A plain one with halitosis, hairy legs and disturbing habits is an even better kind.
However, check and double check her CV.
She may say she can burp the Westminster chimes and doesn't believe in deodorant, but unless you talk to her previous employers, how can you be really sure?
If she also has stiff little hairs on her chin, possibly sprouting from a wart, chances are she'll be quite pricey.
In fact, a nanny like that can more or less write her own ticket.
Men are better than women at many things - that's a fact
It is now commonplace for women to more or less say: 'Men, what a shower.' They will then go on to rubbish them.
They are useless, unnecessary, annoying. They bite the cheese and then put it back in the fridge.
They have no idea who their children's teachers are. They sometimes have no idea who their children are.
"Who is this small person eating Shreddies at the breakfast table this morning? Have we met?"
They never stack or unstack the dishwasher, imagining what? That elves do it in the middle of the night?
And so on and so on, proving what exactly? That women are superior in every way? That men would be lost without them? This is absurd.
Indeed, there are many things which men can do well that women simply can't, and what is the point in pretending otherwise?
Come on, sisters, face it, men are superior in many, many respects. Not yet convinced? Try the following for size:
Have you ever met a woman who falls asleep in front of the television at 9pm, opens her eyes briefly at 10ish, says: "I don't know what you see in Desperate Housewives /ER/Lost," wakes up at 2am, stumbles off to bed, ricochets noisily off the wardrobe, then scratches her private parts before falling flat on her back, where she will spend the rest of the night making a noise alternating between an oncoming train and a peculiar nasal whinnying? Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/domestic2Cart2609_468x348.jpg
Have you ever met a woman who refuses to call a plumber when the pipe behind the washing machine develops a leak, and instead keeps insisting: "I'll fix it, I'll fix it," although when she does get round to it, several months later, bumbles around so clumsily she causes a second leak, but still will not call a plumber and still keeps insisting: "I can fix it," while looking daggers at you, you great big nag.
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who, when driving, has punched her navigator full in the face for simply reading the map upside down, and so now we are miles from anywhere and are going to be really late, so well done you, hope you're proud of yourself?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who will buy her elderly, infirm father a machine for stripping wallpaper for his 87th birthday, on the grounds that 'B&Q was on my way home' and 'What do you mean "try another shop" ... when I'd been to one already'?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who has a secret 'short cut' that is actually longer than the long cut but who will persist in proudly calling it 'my short cut', even though all stopwatches and even the use of two cars to see who gets home first, prove otherwise, none of which count 'because I got caught behind a milk float'?
Sisters, let us be entirely honest, men are good at this and we are not.
Have you ever met a woman who, in spite of her astonishing ability to multi-task - and even multi-task while multi-tasking - can NOT keep up with the plot of a Mafia film, and so will annoy everybody by saying over and over: 'I don't understand who killed Frankie, or why'?
Actually, there are many women who are like this. This, sisters, we are good at. You might even say we excel.
Christmas stress-busting tips
Quit your job before the office party. It will save time later. Get your stories straight.
"Mummy, why does Father Christmas use the same wrapping paper as you?"
"Because we share the same extremely good taste, darling."
Avoid any gadgety shops unless you want your head sliced off by a demo helicopter.
Goats and honeybees are nice thoughts, but hell to wrap and then hell to keep secret.
Keep the scissors and Sellotape for your use only (if necessary, hide in pants).
Try not to get too competitive about cards, always eyeing up how many others have received, but it's sensible to send yourself a good number.
Gift tokens, gift tokens, gift tokens. (Although they always seem like a feeble present to give in early December, by Christmas Eve they are beginning to look pretty cool.)
Should a sexual encounter come your way, remove scissors and Sellotape from pants.
The truth about summer holidays
Listen, why stay at home not getting on when you can all drive thousands of miles across France to spend two weeks together not getting on? You know it makes sense.
It's tempting to go on separate holidays but, alas, the kids will always find you in the end.
Here are the things no child has ever been heard to say on holiday:
"I could sit in the back of this car for ever."
"I'll write a postcard to Grandma." "Please could you suncream me? I will stand very still. Oops, I think you have missed a bit there."
"I've probably had enough ice-cream for one day."
"Any chance of fitting in a medieval church this afternoon?" "I've run out of books to read."
"I'm bushed; I think I'll turn in and leave you adults to it." "I feel like a shower."
"I'll just unpack and put everything carefully away. (Did you bring the fragranced drawerliners?)"
"I'll just write another postcard to Grandma; you know how Grandma loves postcards."
"Oh, no. Not another water park." "I'll be in in a minute; I've just got to brush all this sand off."
2Is it OK if I hang my trunks out to dry?"
And, of course: "I'll get it, Mum; it's your holiday, too."
Extracted from Always Go To Bed On An Argument by Deborah Ross, published by Profile on October 11 at £9.99. ° Deborah Ross