Helpless in Hong Kong

Before we left London any mention of our move to Hong Kong invoked the universal response, “You’ll have loads of help.” I could hardly wait. Fully supportive of my aspiration to be a Hong Kong princess a Special Friend gave me a small book entitled “How to run your home without help” by Kay Smallshaw. First published in 1949, my book contains such gems as “Running a home may seem unspectacular and ordinary, but making a success of it, so that the home is a happy one for all who live in it, is creative work to rank with the best. Exhausting though it may be, it enriches the personality.” We laughed together at the thought of me reclining in Hong Kong, glass of wine in hand while someone else did my housework and I prepared to embrace my new pampered life-style with barely-disguised enthusiasm.

Our arrival in early August was much aided by our Bulgarian nanny who flew out with me and the children to help settle us in. After four weeks she returned home to get married and whilst I mourned her departure I did feel her husband-to-be might have a prior claim on her time. She was succeeded by our one-time Czech au pair who, after backpacking around Asia, arrived to spend September helping me out. “What is this? An employment agency for Eastern Europeans?” snorted my husband back in June when he heard of my plans. I wish. For neither of us could have anticipated the time or complications involved in employing the much needed amah we so longed for. The day dawned when the lovely Czech returned to her studies in London and I was left well and truly help-less in Hong Kong.

On day one my husband brings me a cup of tea in bed. He lays breakfast and gets the older boys going while I drag myself up. To be fair he does this every morning but today I appreciate him more than ever and am inclined to rechristen him the Domestic God. I am particularly sad when he leaves for the office. Once breakfast is cleared and packed lunches made, I go upstairs with the Little Ones, tidy their bedroom, get them dressed and clean their teeth before seeing them on to their nursery bus.

So now it’s just me and Kay Smallshaw alone in the house. She instructs me to “settle the order for the morning’s tasks.” I do quite well and plough through the housework, or the daily round as she calls it: I sweep inside (ant and cockroach prevention) and outside (snake prevention). I clean bathrooms and hoover rugs. Whilst hanging out the washing I notice that the dress that almost cost me my daughter has dyed the whole wash pink. Whilst I can live with pink napkins I'm not sure how the boys will feel about their pink pants.

I remove little handprints from glass doors and empty the waste paper baskets. Then I make the beds. Unlike Kay I do not find that “bedmaking can be quite a pleasant interlude from the dusting and sweeping” but perhaps that’s because I’m not doing enough dusting. I know I’m not matching up to her high standards when I leave cloths and detergents all over the place and have to go back and search for them for, as Kay says, “It’s the sign of a slovenly worker to leave jars and tins around!” Yup, that’s me! Next I take out the rubbish. As I lug the sack along the path next door’s two maids give me a friendly wave from where they sit in the kitchen enjoying a quiet cup of tea together.

By day two I’m bored stupid. The novelty of being a modern-day Kay Smallshaw and making a success of my housekeeping has already worn off. I get through the morning with the help of Diet-Coke and chocolate. If Kay Smallshaw is to be believed all this housework is having a beneficial effect on my figure so all extra calories are cancelled out.

In the course of the next few days I am relieved to discover I can still cook. My enthusiasm for being in the kitchen increases no end when it dawns on me I can set up my lap top and listen to Radio 4 while I work. I'm annoyed that I did not think of this earlier. I can barely hear the World Service murmuring live through the UK night so I “listen again” to the Today programme and am amused to hear John Humpreys saying, Good morning, this is Today, because in fact it’s yesterday. I am a day behind and am forever running to catch up. But the news is the same whatever day it is as stock markets around the world fall and fall.

As far as ironing goes I get better. The children’s clothes are at least relatively small and one advantage of eternal summer is that they only ever wear shorts and t-shirts but I really struggle with the king-size duvet cover. It strikes me that in a country with an immigrant population of 250,000 foreign domestic helpers I am possibly the only expat in Hong Kong to be doing my own ironing. And my husband’s, and my nine year old’s and my seven year old’s and my four year old’s and my two year old’s. This is not good. Whilst I can’t say my personality is being enriched by the experience I will admit to a feeling of relief when I reach the bottom of the ironing basket.

Far from being the multi-tasking genius I have always considered myself, I find that my days tend to fall into the laundry, cooking or cleaning category. Thus on some days we eat well in an untidy house and on others we have neatly ironed clothes but make do with leftovers. To my intense irritation I find I grow more rather than less exacting as time goes on. It begins to matter when the stairs look dusty and I become obsessive about using a sleeve board to iron my husband’s shirts. I even clean out the fridge. Perhaps I am morphing into Kay Smallshaw after all. What am I trying to prove, I wonder? I know I can do it but it is to the exclusion of all else I once enjoyed and at the end of the day, the daily round is mind-numbingly, back-achingly, relentlessly, finish-it-all-only-to-start-again DULL.

As for my aspiration to be a Hong Kong princess, the tiara has definitely slipped. Let’s just say that for now she’s more Cinderella than Sleeping Beauty.