Home Improvements
Andy Carter
Writer from Leeds. Mostly about the delights and despairs of parenting. Represented by Graham Maw Christie Literary Agency. Day job as a probation officer in Bradford.
Joshua and I regularly stand on the corner of our street and wave at the cars as they go past. Admittedly not the most imaginative of activities but you can get 15 minutes out of it and he seems to enjoy it. A few weeks ago, we’d been doing this for a while and were getting worse results than usual, a wave back rate of around 30%. I turned to discuss the reasons for our poor form with Joshua but discovered he’d clambered over a stranger’s wall and was amongst their shrubbery, out of sight. So, for an unknown amount of time, drivers will have seen a 34-year-old man stood on a street corner. Waving. I told Louise about this when we got in, but she didn’t smile.
“What the hell, Andy! You let Joshua out of your sight?”
I was stung by our activity again last week. After a middle-aged man in a Land Rover clearly saw us but chose not to wave back, I said, “His loss, Joshua. What a misery.” A couple of minutes later, an elderly lady was walking along the street with her shopping and Joshua waved at her back. I’m certain she didn’t see him, but Joshua was unconvinced and shouted at her.
“Misery!”
I need to come up with some new stuff to do.
When I’m not being a poor role model for our toddler, we have been spending the new kind-of-but-not-quite-lockdown trying to improve our house and garden. Now I’m in my thirties, I’ve started to care about not living in squalor. The turning point came in our last rented flat when, late one night, the damp bedroom wallpaper peeled off the wall and smothered me in my sleep.
To start with, we (Louise’s dad) built a sleeper border in our back garden. We bought the borders 6 months ago and every time Louise saw them strewn across the grass because I was incapable of assembling them, I imagine she loved me a bit less. I watched YouTube tutorials, but they all seemed to feature rugged-but-charming Australian men chatting for a few seconds before flitting to a quick clip of some power tools in action, then a perfectly finished border. Not helpful. My pal said he’d help but his wife recently gave birth and he’s selfishly decided to prioritise his son. Anyway, Louise’s dad is good at this sort of thing and, with zero fuss, finished the job by lunchtime.
Next, we paid a man to industrially clean our living room carpet which was vile on several levels. It is brown and scratchy and has suffered further due to a combination of a faulty hoover and the fact that someone in our house has been sighted drawing animals on it with their wee (I’d had a few drinks.)
The man was in and out within 45 minutes, during which time he had a coffee and two chocolate Hobnobs, but he did a terrific job. I did some basic maths and worked out he was on an hourly rate of ￡50+. Once you’ve got your carpet cleaning kit, there can’t be many outgoings, can there? Time for a career change?
The following day, I was weeding in the front garden before a family trip to Curry’s. Nothing screams out excitement like that sentence, does it? (If I’m hoping to turn these blogs into a book one day, I need to up my game.) Just before we left, I ran into the kitchen to wash my hands, momentarily forgetting my trainers were caked in soil, and neglecting to take them off, so his happened:
To try and redeem myself, I painted the front porch a few days later. I was stood on a chair, listening to Desert Island Discs through my headphones and having a reasonably good time. Midway through, a workman arrived next door and, on entering our neighbour’s house, set the alarm off.
Louise had just put Jacob down for a nap and came out to ask if he could, perhaps, turn the alarm off. What followed was a heated exchange, which I didn’t fully catch as I was straining to listen to Yusuf Cat Stevens telling Lauren Laverne the origins of his stage name (an ex-girlfriend thought he looked like a cat.)
As the alarm continued to blare, I took my headphones out in time to hear Louise and the man being thoroughly unpleasant to each other. I continued painting the porch, hoping the situation would resolve itself.
When we got inside, Louise was unimpressed.
“He was a dick. Why didn’t you stick up for me?”
Ah, jeez. He was a dick, wasn’t he? Why didn’t I do anything? I cast my mind back to a time in our twenties when a drunk man insulted me for having “Dumbo ears” and Louse, quick as a flash, told him she liked my ears and at least I wasn’t bald like him. I felt like shit. Wanting to prove I’m not a spineless idiot, I belatedly headed round to speak to the workman. My aim was to get him to come to our house and apologize to Louise. While remaining socially distant.
Wearing salmon shorts and a paint-speckled Abbey Dash t-shirt, I felt my heart racing as I knocked on the door. The workman answered. He was holding a hammer.
“Um, hi. Please could you go and apologize to my wife for how you just spoke to her?”
“No.”
I hadn’t considered this outcome.
“Really. So, you won’t do it?”
“Nope.”
Wonderful.
I looked at the hammer and trudged back to ours, accepting that my intervention was too little too late. I further excelled myself as a man, husband and father by doing that thing where you have a go at your other half because you are annoyed with yourself, then headed out for an angry jog which resulted in an even angrier McDonalds.
Of course, living through a pandemic with a wild toddler and a baby who isn’t particularly keen on either feeding or sleeping has been challenging but I’m pleased to say that any spats Louise and I have don’t usually last long. They rarely stretch into a silent breakfast, at least.
“Joshua, can you ask your mother if she’d like Cheerios or Shreddies, please?”
There is no doubting I have been a bit rubbish recently, though, and I saw an opportunity to do some penance a couple of days ago. It was raining heavily, and we’d been indoors all day, starting to go a bit mad.
“Right, I’ll take the boys out…”
I realize this may sound like I’m trying to gain credit for looking after my own children. Let me remind you it was raining really hard. Lashing it down, I’d say. A heroic act. After I’d faffed around getting wellies and waterproofs on, and barely attaching a pram cover, which has been designed to push me to the edge, I realized I had no plan for the outing.
“Where are we going, daddy?” Joshua asked, looking sceptical.
“Well, those cars aren’t going to wave at themselves, are they?”