Dishing the dirt on housework

As my colleague Kathryn Holmquist wrote in a recent feature, we've all been there at one time or another. "She comes in the door at 6 p.m. ready to drop, and sees hours of housework, cooking and childcare ahead of her. He comes in the door at 7 p.m., drops on to the couch and flicks on the TV . . ."

But then . . . oh no! He realises the remote control is on the floor! He can't reach it without getting up again. He drops hints, hoping that maybe she'll see his predicament, but she's too busy doing . . whatever it is she does in the evenings. Besides, she'll want to watch Coronation Street if he reminds her. So there's no alternative. He drags himself wearily off the sofa, thinking: life's so unfair.

All right, I'm exaggerating a little bit here. The remote is rarely so far away that a guy can't reach it - using his toes, for instance - without technically getting up. But the fact that the remote-displacement problem (housework is often directly to blame) wasn't even mentioned in Kathryn's piece illustrates the one-sided nature of public discourse on this subject.

I'm not surprised the German Greens are making an issue out of housework, because the debate in our home has always had a political edge: the demands for me to make a full statement to the house, the gradual descent into mutual recrimination and shouts of "Resign!" and "Yer father was a Blueshirt," and so on.

But if there's one thing that women and certain male columnists have in common, it's that we both like to exaggerate how bad men are around the house. The reality is different. Most modern men will happily throw themselves into childcare and cooking, and as for cleaning, well, two out of three ain't bad.

The dispute over cleaning is essentially ideological, with men and women coming to it from completely different perspectives. It has been said men are from Mars (which would explain the "red dust-covered" surface), while women are from another planet altogether. But the basic point is that men don't see dirt at the microscopic levels women do.

I've been seeing a lot more of it lately, though, thanks to my daughter. Yes, since the baby started orally examining surfaces which used to be exclusively for walking, sitting or cleaning your football boots on, microscopic hygiene has taken on an importance I'd never have suspected.

Like a mad wine-taster, a baby will try anything before - if you're lucky - spitting it out. She'll find a ball of old fluff on the kitchen floor, for example, and roll it around her mouth, thoughtfully, with an expression that says: "Hmm . . . damp garden earth, hints of peat-briquette dust and bicycle oil, and a delicious linoleum finish", before ejecting it and moving on to the intriguingly stained area around the rubbish bin.

And watching this in horror, I have some small conception of the world as it appears through my wife's eyes. All those germs on the floor! Of course, I still find it easier to keep my daughter airborne for hours, or even days, than to get down and wash it.

Ant newsflash: Some housework will always be left to men, however: ant removal, for example. We had a slight recurrence of the problem this week when we discovered a small army of them - cue X-Files music - lurking behind a futon in the living room, just 24 hours before my wife's nephew was due to stay (how could they have known we were putting him in the futon?)

Anyway, we activated our non-violent ant-deterrent programme, sprinkling a border of paprika on the floor around them. And sure enough, 24 hours later they hadn't moved beyond this border. Unfortunately, they hadn't moved anywhere else either.

So finally, I reached for the vacuum cleaner. My wife couldn't bear to look; and, true enough, a guy with a Hoover is not a pleasant sight.