Family: Janet Christie's Mum's the Word

Now that the boydults have friends with flats and jobs they return from visits with their horizons broadened on the domestic frontier, after watching their pals loading washing machines and turning out healthy meals that consist of more than Doritos and dips. Middle returned from Oz with laundering skills as improved as his boomerang throwing and I have a new respect for his friend over there.

PIC PHIL WILKINSON.TSPL / JOHNSTON PRESS JANET CHRISTIE , MAGAZINE WRITER

“Yeah, he’s a grown up, cooks, shops, washes, work ethic and that.”

So I needn’t have worried. Just as well, since it turns out the contact address Middle had given me for his Oz adventure – 42 Wallaby Way – turned out to be that of P Sherman, the dastardly dentist in Finding Nemo. Presumably when Middle’s overpriced parka I bought him that was in the bag that fell off the flatbed truck he was driving from Perth to Melbourne turns up, it will find its way to Wallaby Way and a boil wash. Grrrr.

Next I find Eldest in the kitchen, returned from Belgium where he was helping his girlfriend move into student accommodation, and there appear to be stirrings of the realisation that he may not want to live with his mum for the rest of his life. Aw.

Anyway, he’s staring at the oven as if seeing it for the first time, checking out the rings on the top and the oven bit below, the handy grill in between, appreciating that this is where his five meals a day are generated.

“Really useful, a cooker. I noticed in Belgium that If you’re in a shop and you can only buy things that you can cook without an oven, it’s tricky.

“Like if you only have a microwave like she does [his girlfriend] there are so many things you just can’t do – veggie burgers, pizza, pastry things... We’re really lucky to have an oven here.”

“Er, yes we are.”

“Yeah. I must learn more things to cook on it.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. So, what’s for tea?”

Baby steps.