Home Front Alice Pitman

Now that both grown-up children have moved back home, I’ve let it be known that I no longer expect to hear the words ‘What’s for dinner?’ just as I’m putting my feet up to watch The Chase.

‘It’s the end of an era,’ I told them. If, after 25 years, they still expect their mother to do the lion’s share of the cooking, they’ve got another think coming. Initially, they both took this surprisingly well. ‘Of course,’ they said. ‘We’ll all muck in.’

The new democratic regime started with such promise. A vague sort of timetable was drawn up and, for a while, it ran so smoothly it felt like being part of a jolly workers’ cooperative in the 1970s.

‘It’s my turn to cook tonight, isn’t it?’ Betty would dutifully say, before experimenting with exotic dishes. And although she was over-fond of serving quinoa and pomegranate seeds with everything (‘Just eat it! It’ll stop you getting dementia’), no one complained. A joyless Gwyneth Paltrow diet was better than having to cook oneself. Neither did we mind when, after a few months, Betty started running her kitchen as though catering for an Alabama chain gang. Her alarming, twice-weekly 8pm holler of ‘’s ready! come and get it!’ was our cue to line up with empty bowls and be served directly from the saucepan on the hob.

Then she tired of her stint as house cook, and took to disappearing for two-hour baths in the evening, in the hope someone else would take over. Even the roar of her Vitamix, in which she used to prepare her frightening, soil-coloured vegetable smoothies – containing so much ginger it blew your head off – stopped.

Then Fred stepped up to the plate,

saying he would happily take on more than his share (the word ‘happily’ designed to make Betty look as Waynetta Slobbish as possible). The announcement was greeted with universal but wellconcealed alarm. Our sense of foreboding deepened when he announced one night that he would be serving up ‘a Mexican feast’. The look of horror that crossed Mr Home Front’s face brought to mind Michael Hordern’s expression when he sees the apparition in Whistle and I’ll Come To You. However, Fred’s Mexican feast was just as tasty as his glorious chicken tagine at the beginning of his brief flirtation with cooking.

Predictably, when the novelty wore off, Fred, too, started to shirk his responsibilties. The jaunty sound of chopping vegetables was replaced by an eerie silence. Investigation would find the chef meditating in his bedroom.

‘Never mind all that,’ I said. ‘Get down those stairs – we’re all starving.’ Where, before, he skipped around the kitchen like the Galloping Gourmet, there was now an edge of martyrdom to his every action. Saucepans crashed at an unnecessarily high volume, loud sighing noises were emitted and, once, there was an exaggerated cry of pain when he mildly scalded himself. And the food was more off-season Broadstairs boarding house than Michelin-starred restaurant.

Then, when Mr H F’s work sent him to Africa for a month, mutiny occurred. The children went on catering strike. Their nightly excuses veered from the feeble (‘I’m tired’) to the frankly ridiculous: ‘Walking Destry did my head in.’

So I decided that, if they wouldn’t pull their weight, neither would I.

Before long, we were all living like Elvis in the Jungle Room, eating cheeseburgers, ready meals and pancakes drenched in maple syrup whenever we felt like it. And dialling up for takeaway curry (I became so wellknown at the Bookham Tandoori that they stopped asking for my name and address). Occasionally, I would feel a pang of motherly conscience and rustle up something homely. But most of the time I was an unashamed slob.

Then Mr H F returned from his travels. Although I was pleased to see him again, a small part of me died, knowing my fat Elvis period had come to an end; like The King, I had also piled on the pounds.

‘Do you know what I really missed when I was in Africa?’ he asked. ‘English cuisine. Better than all that foreign muck.’ He paused. ‘So, what’s for dinner?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I thought, as it’s your first night back, we could all get an Indian takeaway.’