Town Mouse Who wants to be a millionaire? I do

tom hodgkinson

insurance. He enjoys what you might call a traditional marriage, whereby he earns a healthy crust brokering insurance policies for warships in Ukraine, while Mrs Vole does everything else.

‘Mrs Vole never asks me to do shopping,’ he says. ‘That’s her department.’

Another friend, Mr Vulture, who makes vast sums in mergers and acquisitions, also says it simply would not occur to his wife to burden him with a shopping list, following a day of his doing stressful multimillion-dollar deals. It’s the opposite. She enjoys easing his burdens, not adding to them.

When he walks through the front door, she says, ‘You look tired. How about a gin and tonic?’

Then the penny dropped. If you’re a freelance creative type, who doesn’t earn much money and apparently loafs around all day enjoying life, which is the case with Mr Squirrel and me, then your partner correctly realises you can easily pop in to the bakery as you go about your daily business.

It’s distinctly unonerous by comparison with the daily business of Mr Vole and Mr Vulture, who are doing Very Important Work.

It’s a fairly regular occurrence.

Soon after I’ve left the house, whether walking or bicycling, my phone will ping and a text message will arrive from Mrs Mouse containing some sort of command.

Looking back over the texts from the last few months is a bit like reading a cryptic diary. You try to remember what on earth was going on at the time.

Recent examples include this moving and poetic line:

‘I have a craving for Baileys.’

I happily acceded to this instruction and stopped at the Tesco Metro on Uxbridge Road to fulfil it.

There was also this more frugal request:

‘When you come home, would you bring me a bit of bread?’

Another text, if seen by a passing spy, might indicate that we mice are living at a highly luxurious level.

‘Remember cigars.’

Still, this was closely followed by:

‘And get butter.’

In fact, the cigars were a house present for a friend in the country we were off to visit. Mrs Mouse and I do not spend every evening luxuriating in the waft of a Cuban Montecristo, I promise you.

What a casual observer would make of the following I dread to think:

‘Bring back the plastic bag of Tupperware and also the milk jars.’

Sometimes, if I stay at home, I’ll also be pinged little jobs.

‘I’ve left my purse at home. Can you see it? I need my joint card CVC.’

I’m not alone in this. It seems fairly common for wives (and husbands) of all genders to text husbands (and wives) with these requests. One partner takes it upon themselves to control domestic affairs. The other submits.

After I played tennis the other day with Mr Squirrel, Mrs Mouse texted me with this (it was just before Christmas):

‘Could you bring back some pound coins for the Christmas pudding? Change some money at the café or somewhere?

‘And a can of Coca-Cola to clean them in.’

When the text arrived, Mr Squirrel groaned in recognition.

‘That happens to me all the time,’ he said. ‘I’ve barely left the house when the orders start pouring in.’

Looking back, I can see the logic. I was happily playing tennis with Mr Squirrel, having a lovely time, with not a care on the world, while Mrs Mouse was slaving away in a hot kitchen making a Christmas pudding, working for her family. It would naturally occur to her to spread the labour and delegate tasks.

I was keen to discover how widespread this phenomenon is. I questioned Mr Vole, my friend who works in marine

How I crave to live like one of these old-fashioned alpha males, the paterfamilias of yesteryear, who had only one job to do – earn money.

That’s it. They’ve never changed a nappy, cooked a meal, hung out the laundry, cleaned the floor, changed the sheets or been texted a shopping list on their way home from the office.

Their wives fuss around them, making sure they’re happy, bringing them a beer, ironing their shirts and sewing Cash’s woven name tapes into the clothes of their offspring.

Perhaps we slackers had more peace in the olden days, before the invention of the internet and mobile phones. Back then, we could walk out of the house and go and fall asleep on a bench or retire to the pub for a quiet pint, certain of complete peace.

Still, let’s not get too misty-eyed. My own baby-boomer parents were fairly progressive. My mother made huge efforts to prevent my dad from slacking off, and that was before the invention of the mobile phone.

On a Saturday morning, she would present him with a list titled Mousie’s Jobs. It included things like driving to the dump, replacing light bulbs, fixing shelves and taking the kids to the park. She used to boast to friends that she had him ‘well-trained’, like a household slave in ancient Greece. Like father, like son.