JUST GUESS WORK

ERRING ON THE SIDE OF ERRAND CAUTION, INFORMER’S INABILITY TO READ MINDS OR BETWEEN THE LINES MAKES FOR MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Some places are smoke-free. Others are alcohol-free. Technology can be handsfree, medical treatment pain-free, diets gluten-free, attitudes fancy-free, zones tollfree, crap duty-free, payments tax-free and bears hump-free. At Informer’s place, I am now officially errand-free.

I’m more than happy to pitch in, help out and do my bit, but there comes a time when unfair criticism must be answered. Said criticism, unsurprisingly, emanates from Mrs Informer, who has developed the annoying tactic of withholding one piece of information from every errand; one vital titbit without which no errand can be fully completed.

For example, the other day Informer volunteered to do the grocery shopping, whereupon Mrs Informer provided a list bulging with items. I managed to find every one and returned home wearing the smug face of accomplishment that all men adopt after shopping successfully solo. It ended thanks to this apparently innocuous sentence: “Did you remember the eggs?”

Innocuous, my chook’s bum. That sentence was filled with callous strategic intent. No, I hadn’t remembered the eggs because I was unaware such an act of memory was required. Eggs weren’t on the list. I brandished said list before Mrs Informer’s eyes, indicating all the places where the word ‘eggs’ wasn’t.

“Eggs are a given, a no-brainer. You should have read between the lines,” she said. Perhaps that’s true, but surely it would have made more sense to arrange the three — that’s right, count them — three letters required to compose the four letters in the word ‘eggs’, then write ‘eggs’ on the freggin’ list rather than rely on Informer’s grasp of mental telepathy. Poultry in motion it is not.

Another time I trundled off to Bunnings to

“I ESCHEW ALL ERRANDS UNTIL THEY ARE REMOVED OF EVEN THE SLIGHTEST NECESSITY FOR ESP ...”

fetch some screws, a tin of paint and a particular cleaning cloth. I managed two out of three, despite scouring Bunnings for an hour in search of the cloth. How did Mrs Informer react? With this: “Bunnings doesn’t sell that cloth. Only Woolies has that one.”

It’s happening in other areas too. When the car needed petrol, I volunteered and pootled off to our local extortion station. Job done, I returned to: “Did you top up the oil? It needs oil.” Informer had not topped up the oil because Informer hadn’t been told to. And as Mrs Informer is only too aware, her husband knows nothing about cars and cares even less. So if our car needs oil as well as petrol, just tell me. But no, all I got was the shaking head of wifely disdain.

I had a boss who behaved similarly. He’d tell you everything he wanted down to the second-last detail.

The last detail he always kept to himself, springing it just as you thought the job was done. Why? Is it a power thing? An unconscious foible? Cynicism? Bastardry?

Whatever it is, I’m having no more of it. Mrs Informer, I love you, but I hereby eschew all errands until they are removed of even the slightest necessity for ESP, heavenly signs, epiphanies and so on.

For if I am so aberrantly errant as to make nothing but errors when on errands, then I must eradicate the errors of my ways and embark upon a new error-free, errand-free era. Oh, one more thing …