Carol’s Column

You know what? Enough is enough

IT'S really time for a change.

Everything around me is falling to pieces.

I need a new fridge, stove, glasses, tea set, husband and washing machine. Not necessarily in that order either.

You know things have come to the end of the road when you open the door of the fridge for a cheese and cucumber sandwich and find yourself taking a bite out of the door because you're holding it in your hand instead of the sandwich.

We are the only family in town that owns a fridge made of Pratley putty.

Not that the rest of the things around us are much better.

It's beyond a joke when your diningroom chairs beg you not to sit on them because they're exhausted and they threaten to disintegrate beneath you.

And my husband's not much better.

Of course, all my friends are in the same position.

Bypasses

What happened to the handsome, sprightly, energetic young men we married? Instead, between us, we own a collection of sore backs, sciatic legs, bypasses, numb toes and dropped stomachs. And this all in the space of 20 or so years?

Last week my stove died.

Finally. Oh, it's twitched, moaned and groaned over the past 18 years. But this was the real thing.

“Look, forget it, Lady,” said the stove doctor sent to resuscitate it. He finally arrived five days after telling me he was giving me preferential treatment because it was an emergency.

“Do you realise that Johannesburg stoves have the highest incidence of heart failure in the country?” he asked me.

I was astonished.

He examined ours carefully, probing, tapping and checking every beat and throb, then shook his head sadly.

“The prognosis is bad,” he said mournfully. “There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, that could revive this stove. Treatment would be a waste of your money and my time. Do yourself a favour — throw it away.

Shiny

“After 18 years you deserve a treat. A nice, new, shiny, self-cleaning glass-topped little wonder.”

I could only agree with him.

However, this wasn't the time to tell him that after 18 years of drudgery my idea of a treat wasn't a glass-topped stove.

No, if I had the choice, I'd plumb for a natty little mink — oh but would I wear it after all my talk about beauty without cruelty? Don't try me, don't try me. A six-carat diamond pendant to swing jauntily between breasts that no longer swing so jauntily. A snazzy Gucci silk suit instead of my usual Woollies combination and a millionaire in an apple-green jet to sweep me away to the Greek islands for a five-year sojourn.

Such is the stuff housewives fantasise about.

So much so for glass-topped stoves.

Yet one learns.

When my washing machine broke down — it's one of the old-fashioned kind, unlike the ones you see on TV that come with a smiling man in a white coat and a box of washing powder — I decided my large family of the ever-swallowing mouth-holes and large stomachs could do their own washing.

So they retaliated by donating every non drip-dry item to the school jumble sale and we have the only washing on the entire continent that is so well organised that it does itself.

Marches

Thrown into the bath on Saturday, it soaks for a week until it jumps out and marches itself to the washing line.

Years ago I was given an electric frying pan for a birthday present — that was the year before the electric drill and the year after the soldering machine — such is the stuff romance is made of.

Even that came to a sticky end this week when my third youngest unmarried son used it to boil lead to make counterfeit money.

“Jamie, it's against the law,” I shouted when I saw what he was doing.

“What, making counterfeit money?”

“No, using my electric frying pan to do so. Lead sticks to the pan and it's poisonous for the food.”

It's important to teach the kids the wrongs and rights of a situation.

Yes, after 18 years, enough is enough. I'm tired of cycling to work because my ancient chariot has a headache and refuses to budge out of the driveway.

Anthropologist Margaret Meade once said that the life of every marriage should be 15 years.

She's right. We're three years over the limit now and our wedding presents have worn thin.

But please, second time round, I don't want 100 stainless steel tiddles. It's taken me 18 years to get rid of them to all our other married friends.

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