“It’s your job to pick things up off the floor…”

These are the words that my (almost) four-year old daughter greeted me with when I tried to encourage her to pick up the food that she had dropped on the floor;

“Mummy; it’s your job to pick things up off the floor.”

“It most certainly is not!” I protested, ponderous and plummy in my outrage.

But I must admit that I’ve been reading the book Longbourn - the reimagining of Pride and Prejudice from the servants’ point of view (a brilliant book, would highly recommend it) and have been heavily identifying with the servants. O.K. so I don’t have to render pig fat into soap or stand on the back of a moving carriage while my ‘masters’ are cosily ensconced within, but I do have to get up ridiculously early and be at the beck and call of a couple of capricious despots. Although I don’t actually get a cuff round the ear for any perceived transgression, I do suffer from many little sharp elbows in the ribs, (accidental) head butts and pokes in the eye. I am handed messy things to clean up and I an almost invisible provider of food and have to satisfy someone else’s needs before I even think about seeing to my own. In fact, as soon as I dare to sit down and try to eat or drink anything, the tyrants are already demanding more.

I don’t want this to turn into one of those whinging, when is it ‘wine-o’clock’? I am so hard-done -by posts, not really, I do realise how lucky I am to have my family, I just thought it was interesting that my daughter genuinely thought that my job was to skivvy! And I am splitting hairs here because it is me who cleans up after them but I just don’t like to hear it in black and white! ‘Your job to pick things up off the floor’ - and me a feminist and all! Perhaps she was just trying it on - she is demonically clever, maybe she was winding me up and I’m too easy to get a rise out of. She also asked me what her job was.

“Your job is to play and to learn.” I told her, wishing that we could switch jobs for a minute. “And also (futile attempt to turn things my way) to pick up the things that you’ve dropped, when I ask you to!”