Single Father, Better Dad. Mark Tucker

glimmer of good news as far as the evening was concerned. Neither of the girls were going out, instead one of them was having a friend over. This gave me the opportunity to either catch up on some of my chores, or have a glass or two of wine. It had been a hard day so I went for the alcohol option. With the girls happy upstairs, I made myself comfy, poured a generous glass of red and thought back on the day. If I was going to survive I needed to manage my household chores far more efficiently. I realised two things. One, that I hadn’t given my wife enough credit for running the house while she too was working full-time, and the other that I was going to have to earn my leisure time. ‘Me time’ would be a reward for efficiency.

      5

       Sunday bloody Sunday

      Sunday morning. Same start as Saturday, a cup of tea and the paper in bed, but I wasn’t as relaxed as I had been the previous morning, I had more work to do and the clock was ticking. I decided to go to Coles early. A piece of male advice I had been given, and which I thought might be quite positive, was that supermarkets are the new nightclubs for the 40-plus generation, full of lonely, single women and a great place to pick up.

      I wondered whether the supermarket world was similar to the nightclub world, although this was a difficult concept for me to analyse fully as I rarely went to the supermarket, and I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been to a nightclub. Did different supermarkets attract a different type of punter? Did Coles have a higher social standing than Safeway, with a more sophisticated clientele? Did location make a difference—would supermarkets nearer the city be more expensive and harder to get into? Were some supermarkets meat markets? Obviously they are all meat markets to a degree, but you know what I’m getting at. Would there be security whose job was to turn away large groups of men, or those people who didn’t have the ‘right look’? Would I need to wear a collar and proper shoes?

      A lot to think about over my Sunday morning cornflakes. I wasn’t really looking to pick up but, on the basis that my local Coles might become my new local wine bar and first impressions could be important, I thought I should at least make an effort on my initial visit. I went for a pair of jeans and a relatively trendy shirt, a sort of ‘happening’ single dad look.

      I was slightly apprehensive as I went through the doors to Coles. I was nervous about all the new people that I was about to meet and wondered whether, in an hour or two, I would be sharing a flat white with my new, fabulously exciting, friends. Given the build up to my trip, and the agonising over which shirt gave me the best enigmatic and interesting, yet available, look, it was a bit disappointing to realise that, in reality, Coles at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning is actually just a supermarket.

      It has to be said that there were quite a lot of 40-plus singles in the house, but they were mostly fairly sad looking blokes. Even in the early days of my new life I could easily recognise the single men. Their trolleys were a giveaway—baked beans, cupa-soups, frozen chips, frozen pies, ready meals (single serve) and so on—all the hallmarks of a solitary life. It occurred to me that the reason sales of Lean Cuisine meals have risen so dramatically recently is not because women are buying them as part of a calorie controlled diet, but because you can chuck them in the microwave. They have become a key part of the single man’s diet and volumes are up because men need to eat three of them at a time to feel full.

      There were also a few women in the store but they didn’t appear to be treating their shopping trip as a pseudo nightclub experience. In fact it was the complete opposite. The women had generally adopted a grim faced, determined look as though the trip to Coles was a necessary evil and they were attempting to break their individual course record for a weekly shop. They were dressed for it too. A tracksuit is clearly the fashion choice of the efficient female shopper. There was no interaction, no flirty looks, no sexual tension—the only occasional moments of excitement and whispered gasps seemed to be caused by the discovery of a new weekly special.

      After spending thirty minutes taking in the Coles vibe and concluding that this would not form a key plank of my future social life, I realised, rather disappointingly, that my trolley only contained some milk and a small packet of cheese slices. My lack of progress was due to a combination of factors—partly the distraction of my social observations, partly because I didn’t know where anything was and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that I didn’t have a list and therefore didn’t know what I needed to buy. But I did need to get going so, to speed things up, I took what I considered to be a fairly practical route and, starting at the first aisle, went through the whole store putting in two of every item I thought I might need for my new life, a sort of Noah’s ark approach to shopping.

      It’s amazing what you can buy in a supermarket. There is so much more to it than just food—cleaning products, batteries, insect repellent, printer cartridges, Christmas crackers on special, Easter eggs on special, Halloween gear on special. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store and within an hour I had a fully loaded trolley. It was a bit of a shock at the checkout.

      “That will be $408.57,” said Sharni.

      “Oh okay.” Bloody hell—was that a lot? Still, I reckoned I had a month’s supply of food in my trolley.

      “Have a relaxing afternoon,” she said, in what I thought was a slightly ambiguous way.

      Was she suggesting something else? I hesitated as I pretended to study my receipt, playing for time. What was the etiquette here? Was there more to come? Was she expecting me to make a move?

      “You need to move your stuff,” she barked.

      “Oh okay. Sorry.”

      I guess I was wrong. And anyway, why would a nineteen-year-old check-out chick be interested in a middle aged bloke who couldn’t even get his groceries into his trolley efficiently? I saw her eyes roll as she greeted the next customer. I couldn’t leave quickly enough.

      I got home feeling good about my newly successful hunter-gatherer role. The floor was strewn with my shopping. The girls came down—hyenas around the kill—and started going through the bags.

      “Did you get any BBQ shapes?” What are they? I thought.

      “We need cheese slices for school lunches.”

      “And avocado.”

      “And snacks for play lunch.”

      It was becoming a long list of forgotten items.

      “What’s for dinner tonight?”

      I wasn’t sure. I had bought stuff, rather than ingredients to make up a meal.

      There were a few other issues. It turned out that I had lots of cleaning products already; the bin liners were too small for the bin; I had bought so much fresh food that the ham, yoghurts, vegetables and other disposables wouldn’t fit in the fridge (maybe I could stir fry them for dinner?); I had added to the already generous supply of ‘spag bol’ sauce; and I had completely forgotten to buy any chicken.

      I realised rather sadly that, despite filling the trolley and spending over $400 on what I thought would be a month’s supply of food, I would be going back to Coles again in the next couple of days.

      To make matters worse it was lunchtime already. Another morning had passed. I decided to have a more typical Sunday afternoon and focus on the things I knew I could do well, a sort of confidence booster. I mowed the lawn and watched some rugby.

      At 9.30 that evening, with the ironing done and the girls in bed, I slumped on the sofa. I momentarily had a feeling of victory, the feeling I used to have at the end of the occasional weekend when my wife had been away and I had looked after the children and the house. I would feel tired, but satisfied that all required tasks had been completed, no one had been injured and the house was neat and tidy. But this time the moment of victory was fleeting. This was not the end—this was just the beginning. I would have to do this all again next weekend, and the next one, and the next one after that. In fact I would need to do this every weekend as well as cook for and look after the girls during the week. I was knackered and just to finish the weekend off nicely it was a workday tomorrow. I needed a day off already.

      I