Is It Just Me? (3 page)

Most of us are good, most of the time. Apart from the person who invented the Milk & Cookies Milky Bar, who is inherently evil.

I like to believe that people are generally wonderful. But sometimes good people do bad things. Like me, for example. When I was in my late twenties, I was the other woman. Now, before you tear up this book and strike me off your Christmas-card list, please consider that it was a total accident.

I had met a charming lawyer – let's call him Matt – at a barbecue and we had hit it off like a Weber on fire over a few sausages-in-bread and a nifty pasta salad. Matt lived in the country, which was great for me as I wasn't up for a full-on relationship that involved spending nights on the couch in trackies watching
Hey Hey It's Saturday
. I didn't want boring and I certainly didn't get it.

Things progressed quickly and, between my job as an advertising copywriter and my fabulous single life I enjoyed with my naughty friends, we'd meet at my flat, which resembled a two-storey garage, for clandestine grease-and-oil changes. It was, to say the least, exciting. But it never occurred to me to ask why he'd always answer my calls (only ever to his mobile – alarm bell number one: no home phone) within the first ring and there was never a chance to leave a voicemail message. Ever. He didn't have the option (alarm bell number two: no voicemail). It would just ring out.

One night I was at a friend's party and I had a missed call from a private number, which I knew would be him (alarm bell number three: silent numbers). I excused myself from the third round of Midori Shakers and called him back from outside the pub – only to be surprised when a voicemail message kicked in. “Hi! You've called Dave … and Clare.
*
If you have an inquiry about your tax return something something something …” I didn't hear the end of the MessageBank greeting because I'd passed out in the gutter. Or maybe it was the sound like a kettle whistling on my eardrum that muffled the end of it.

He was married. His name wasn't Matt. He was an accountant. The single lawyer called Matt I'd been seeing for a few months was actually a married accountant called Dave. Ten minutes later, he called me back after having seen two missed calls from me. Clearly oblivious to the fact he'd activated his identity-revealing voicemail greeting, the conversation started cheerily enough.

Matt/Dave: “Hey, gorgeous! Are you having a good night?”

Chrissie/Idiot: “Yeah. It's all right … but not as exciting as hanging out with a married accountant called Dave.”

Matt/Dave:
Click.

He must have hit a weird reception patch or gone through a tunnel. At home. Because his phone immediately dropped out. And I never called again. I really wanted to. Because I wanted the nitty-gritty. I was sleepless with questions. How did he decide to do this? Had he done it before? Was I a moron? How many others had been hoodwinked? Did his wife know? Could he do me a good deal on my tax return?

I'd have vivid dreams where I'd confront him and abuse him with clever arguments for which he had no answers. The lack of closure sent me mad. Armed with his true identity, profession and the town he lived in (the only piece of his story that checked out), I was able to track him down and see where he lived and worked. And I drove there.

Before you start calling Glenn Close's management and asking her to play me in a biopic, consider that I really had no clue as to why I was in the car with the street directory opened on a page with lots of white and green bits leading me down a highway I'd never been on to a place I'd never heard of. I think I just wanted to see something real.

I got to his street and drove past his house, where a pretty blonde was helping two kids out of a car. So there were kids, too. I didn't see that coming. It made me so sad for them. What sort of a man was this? I contemplated doing a U-turn and telling her to run. That her husband was a liar and a narcissist and perhaps her whole life was a lie. But it wasn't really my place, was it? I drove away.

To this day I wonder if that was the right thing. Would I want to know if my husband had been up to this? I care deeply about the sisterhood and would do nothing to make a woman and mother question what she believed was true and real in her life. But does keeping her husband's secret make me complicit? Or should I have told her and watched what meant nothing to me and nothing to anyone, in the scheme of things, destroy the lives of many?

 

29th April 2012

Last week my friend called me out on something I've been doing for about three years. I thought no one had noticed my hoodwinking habit, but I was wrong, apparently. I'm blushing now as I write this, as I undoubtedly did then, when she said, “Why do you call your nanny your babysitter?”

“Do I? Really? I don't. Do I? Really? Do I?”

“Yeah, you do. You always have. It's fine … but I was just wondering … why?”

Again I said I wasn't even aware I did it. But I was aware. Am aware. I've been doing it on purpose so people don't get the wrong idea about the way I live and start to assume I'm clapping my hands twice to clear the table when I've finished my caviar and complaining to Raoul about the leaves in the pool.

The fact is, I work in breakfast radio, which means I have to skulk out of the house like a one-night stand before dawn every day. I've exited this way for more than five years. My partner also works and has to be on site with his little blue Esky of Yoplait tubs and ham sangas by 7am. Like clockwork, at 6.20am three mornings a week, Kirsty arrives at our house in a cloud of Clinique, happy to love my children while we're out earning enough money to keep a roof over all of our heads. She has been coming for nearly three years. In our absence, she cuddles our children and calls them gorgeous and doesn't seem to mind the world's biggest three-year-old crashing into her like a cheesy AWF wrestler.

Kirsty is, and has been for a while, a nanny. But I have always referred to her as a babysitter because everyone knows that nannies are for rich people who are too busy playing tennis and having long and late liquid lunches to be bothered raising their own children. To have a babysitter is far more egalitarian. And a lot less up yourself.

My life, as a working mother of two small boys, is busy. I simply can't pull it all off without help. To assume that anyone can is completely bonkers. So why are we lying about getting help? I lie because I get the distinct vibe that I am perceived as being selfish for working; that work is somehow a luxury I have chosen over raising my children, and I am fist-pumping the air every time I pull out of the driveway, screaming, “See ya later, suckers!” over my shoulder. Which, on occasion, I have done. But usually I am quietly frowning and trying to distract myself from the memory of my warm, curly-headed babies all chubby in their beds as I swoosh through green lights listening to the 4.30am news.

There is also the perception that if I'm going to be bold enough to work, I should bloody well do all the housework myself, at the very least. Well, I don't. I'm outing myself. I have a cleaner, Rita. She comes for two hours on a Monday and it is the highlight of my week. For about an hour, before Leo gets home from kindergarten, my house is shining. As opposed to
The Shining
, which is more like it is when Leo gets home. I can't mop my floors with two kids running, riding or crawling all over it all the time! Why do I feel bad about getting someone to do it in the only two hours in a week when there's no one in the house? Why am I even justifying it now to you?

I'm justifying it because we are supposed to be doing it all and doing it easily. If we have put our careers on hold to raise our kids at home, we'd better have a great sex life, nutritious meals on the table every night and a house so clean and stylish it could have been torn from the pages of
Vogue Living
. If we're working, we'd better not let that affect our ability to rival Samantha from '60s sitcom
Bewitched
in the wife/mother/housekeeper stakes.

What a load of tosh. I'm here to tell you it's okay to ask for help. And it's okay to pay for it, too. Whether you're working or not. The fact that you have a nanny or a cleaner doesn't mean you're living high on the hog. It doesn't mean your life is easy.

And it doesn't mean you're up yourself, either. It simply means you like clean floors and would prefer your kids weren't left at home alone to turn your place into something from
Lord of the Flies
.

Today I've outed myself as having a nanny and a cleaner. I think I'm on a roll! You know what else? I have my milk delivered (free!) every Friday. I use Coles Online so I can do the weekly shopping in front of
The Voice
AND I don't have to carry it up the front steps. And what about this? Clem at my fruit shop has generously offered free delivery of our weekly fresh bits. I've accepted. Finally, here's the big one. The biggest shortcut. The greatest up-yourself extravagance in my entire life. Instead of dishwashing powder, I. Buy. Finish. Powerballs. Gee, that feels good!

 

6th May 2012

Aaahhhh! Holidays. Is there anything more exciting than that trip up the freeway to the long-term car park at the airport? The delicious panic of wondering if you've packed an extra camera battery and the feverish checking that your passport is still safe in its purpose-bought bag you hunted down at the travel shop?

I have had a few such holidays in my time. First, I went to Tokyo to teach English when I was eighteen. It was a working holiday and my first trip overseas on my own. Upon my arrival at Narita airport, if you listened closely, you could hear the popping of new pathways being blown in my brain. The smells, people – even the cabs – were worlds away from what I had been accustomed to: namely the comfort of eating spag bol in my mother's mission-brown kitchen and weekends spent watching
Countdown Revolution
.

In Tokyo, as a young lass, I met a fellow expat. In hindsight, he looked not dissimilar to Elton John, but to my teenage eyes he was laconic and handsome and older. He barely knew I existed and after a few months of my desperate flirting, he introduced me to his lithe Japanese girlfriend.

More than ten years later, I took another working holiday, this time to Jakarta for just over a year. I accepted a position as creative director of an ad agency in the bustling capital. I was lured by the promise of a salary in US dollars and the inclusion of a driver and a maid. What I learnt was that no amount of perceived luxury can replace the ability to walk down to your local for a flat white or enjoy a drink in a hotel bar without the risk of being blown up. I also missed taking in big lungfuls of air without getting two black rings of motorbike-exhaust residue around my nostrils. I couldn't get home fast enough.

In 2007, the year before we started our family, my man, The Chippie, and I visited a little town called Waitomo, which is about 200 kilometres south of Auckland. It is where you'll find a hotel that is three parts Fawlty Towers and one part the Overlook Hotel from
The Shining
. The natty fellow who checked us in also carried our luggage, turned down the beds, delivered room service and served our chowder in the dining room. I think I also saw him driving a golf buggy and pruning shrubs. He may or may not have been the ghost who allegedly haunted the bell tower.

Aside from hosting the world's spookiest hotel, Waitomo is also home to glow-worm caves. To see them you have to get on a boat like one from Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and glide silently on an icy underground river. In the echoey blackness, you look up and there are billions of flickering glow-worms.

I'd never seen anything like it, and when I did, I wept hot little tears of joy. The sight was breathtaking, but more than that, there was something about being newly in love and overseas, knowing I was loved in return and experiencing life at its simplest and best, that made that moment unforgettable.

Later, when we'd had our first baby, we took off for a week to Tasmania. It was the winter of 2009 and Leo was about eight months. We took the boat across so we could bring our car and the roughly seventeen tonnes of kid stuff we required for the seven-day trip. We took a full-size infant bath. And a bottle steriliser the size of a Volkswagen. We also packed about 45,000 nappies because, Lord knows, there are no nappies in Tassie.

We trundled from scenic lookout to bric-a-brac stall to the twenty-eighth colonial jail in a four-kilometre radius, and I sat in a gutter outside Hobart's Salamanca Market feeding Leo from a jar of something while he sat in his car seat. It might not sound like much, but it was a brilliant shake-up from our usual structured mealtimes and home-made organic food.

On that holiday, Leo decided he was over his dummy and learnt to sleep unswaddled. There is something about being away from familiar routines that forces fabulous things to occur, and everyone benefits. Even babies.

In fact, all sorts of magic happens on holidays. Travel is life-changing and when you build memories, you enrich your life. And it doesn't seem to matter if your pilgrimage is to Floriade or fancy Florence – as long as you're on the road, it feels as if you're really living. Your bed may be akin to an oversize phone book and the food might nearly kill you, but isn't it great?

But right now I'm feeling that what would enrich my life is a week poolside in Bali with magazines and a do-not-disturb doorknob tag. Two questions: 1. How much would the excess baggage be for a trike, ExerSaucer and Jolly Jumper? And 2. Does anyone know somewhere with a good kids' club?

 

20th May 2012

Last month, I was lucky enough to interview my foodie hero, Heston Blumenthal. He has a restaurant just west of London called The Fat Duck, which serves up tricky meals such as desserts that look like fried eggs and cakes that are actually chicken liver pâté. He's a clever fellow and his TV show gets a good going over at Chez Chrissie.

I've always liked the cut of his jib, and even more so after doing a little research and finding out that not only is he self-taught and one of only three Britons to achieve Michelin three-star status, he also did his fair share of crappy jobs – including that of a photocopier salesman and debt collector. It cemented my belief that terrible jobs are good for you.

At thirty-eight, I have achieved a kind of career nirvana. I work in radio, which works well with my maternal commitments and allows me to talk at length about issues ranging from
The Voice
to breastfeeding. I adore it. I also work in TV, which means I get to have fun and a free hairdo. But these jobs were a long time coming. Before I got so lucky, I submitted my tax file number to a number of positions, ranging from less than desirable to downright dehumanising. And I'd do them all again. Because they were good for me.

When I was nineteen, I deferred from uni and worked full-time in a supermarket deli. Among other things, this involved defrosting boxes of frozen chickens, removing their necks (secreted within the carcass) and rodding them up on giant skewers to be roasted. Rivulets of pale-pink liquid would run down my inner arm and into my undergarments, heating up over the course of my shift and threatening to produce some kind of salmonella stock. The upside of this job was that, to this day, I really know my
presswurst
from my
pariser
; the downside was that I feel enormous guilt when I ask for thinly sliced anything. Such a hassle.

I've also been a manager of a clothes shop. I loved the 30 per cent off everything in-store, but wasn't such a fan of the constant sweeping of mountains of fluff out of changing rooms fogged in foot odour.

I've also arrived at a smoky office block (back when you could smoke at work) and settled in with a dial-up phone to cold-call strangers, selling them window treatments that turned perfectly good houses into soundproof yet inescapable prisons. Now that was a tough gig. I have also been a call-centre rep for a New Zealand electricity company, a mobile DJ and a showground ice-cream seller.

It wasn't until I worked for free, though, that I started achieving my career dreams. While I was studying advertising at uni, the staff made an entire class out of warning us about how hard it was to get a job in the profession we were sinking ourselves into HECS debt to become qualified for. We'd be lucky to get work in a suburban agency writing copy for instruction manuals, let alone an amazing gig with a corner office working on blue-chip accounts, like Darrin's on
Bewitched
.

With a vast history of ordinary jobs, I had only one thing left to do. I contacted a groovy inner-city ad agency and offered my services for free. They accepted and I found myself scooting into the agency between lectures and tutes to write press ads for a department store. The first ad I ever wrote was five words saying that a new store had opened. I still have it. And it still gives me a thrill.

I was so enamoured with the industry that I started skipping class so I could talk layouts and fonts and deadlines. Eventually, I quit uni and started a proper paid job as a copywriter for another outfit – but what got me the role was the experience I'd gained at that groovy inner-city agency. I am eternally grateful to whoever it was that gave a friendly 24-year-old with a bad moustache a go. And, wherever possible, I try to return the favour by giving work-experience kids the time of day and considering the whole person, not just the qualification, for a position.

Today's workplaces are so busy and often understaffed. The sad fact is that sometimes it is disruptive to the routine to make room for a young person who just wants a chance. The temptation to throw applications for work experience or internships straight into the bin without even opening them is great.

We might think that there wouldn't be a person alive who'd want to hang out in our office, do the lunch run and photocopy those proposals. But we'd be wrong. My bet is there are loads of twenty-somethings who'd be hanging out just to see what your tea room looks like.

And if you're one of those twenty-somethings wondering how you're going to break into your dream job, wax up your mo and write that letter. Who knows where it will lead you?

 

27th May 2012