….especially on yet another rainy, dismal summer Sunday full of wet washing, when you may have to get out the chainsaw just to alleviate the stir-craziness…
Mariella Frostrup in answer to a reader on the agony page of the Observer:
[…]
Let’s talk about the difficulties of sharing a home with a man – a subject that I’m sure will double my mailbox next week. What is it about the opposite sex that makes them so adept at filling space? Whether it’s a bedsit or a mansion, men, with their all-pervading presence, seem to squeeze you into a corner. My opinion is, I admit, marred by my own experiences and therefore subjective, so forgive the gross generalisations. Women do colonise small corners of a shared home with enthusiasm. The bathroom cabinets will be brimful and the wardrobes full. But men manage to fill not the obvious storage spaces but the air itself. Why does making a pot of coffee involve saturating the entire counter? Why does having a shower leave more water on the floor than can have emerged from the showerhead? Is it impossible to lift the lid of the laundry basket instead of depositing discarded items on top? And then, even if you’re lucky enough to have found a tidy Virgo type, there’s the noise pollution: radio, TV, their opinions, their favourite CDs. The only thing men seek out privacy for are their phone calls, and ironically that’s the only part of their lives you may have a minuscule interest in eavesdropping on.
[…]
It doesn’t matter whether the male in question is a partner, parent, child or sibling – I suspect most women who read that today did so with pained recognition.
