My Fantasy Secretary

Take a letter Mr Jones

I've been having the loveliest daydream...

Wanted:  Secretary. 

No. Scratch that. Male secretary. (If I want to boss around a generalised representation of all the men who've ever bossed me, I will...)

Hours: 8.00am - 6.00pm, five days per week. No lunch hours. Lunch hours are for wimps, and wimps need not apply. 

Pay: Negligible. What happened to just being gentlemanly and helping a lady out, for goodness' sake? 

Duties: 

• Some light paperwork and filing. (Note: Filing is in fact a key aspect of the job. Applicant will need to sort through 14 years of household rubbish/correspondence and establish order, so that the next time the Employer needs to find her marriage certificate in a hurry, it doesn't entail a panicked search at 11pm the night before the deadline, with whispered insults and threats leading to a full-blown argument  before the missing document is finally located in the place it was meant to be all along.)
• A little chauffeuring of two indulged children. Through London traffic. In the rush hour. Off-road experience would be handy.
• Some cooking. Alright. A lot of cooking. 
• And maybe some tidying up. 
• With perhaps a little ironing - but only my husband's shirts. I would never trust a man with my silks and man-made fibres...

Qualifications:

• Degree-level education preferred. (Come on. I thought there was a job shortage out there for graduates), but at a push will accept 5 GCSE's, one of which must be in maths to supplement Employer's lack of same.
• Clean driving licence essential (although it must be stated that the successful applicant will not be driving a clean car). Must have the ability to keep eyes on the road whilst dispensing raisins and biscuits to back-seat drivers. Must have the ability to ignore critical comments from said back-seat drivers. Must like to clean cars outside and in (especially ‘in') and be able to disregard the gag-reflex on encountering ancient collection of raisins, biscuits, crumbs and crisps collected in child seats.
• First Aid Certificate useful. Strong stomach and poor sense of smell also useful, as small boys are involved.

Personal Attributes:

• Good time keeping: Key. Lateness will not be tolerated. Employer gets quite enough of that from her husband, thank-you very much.
• Focus: Important, though applicant should not be smug about it. Barbed comments about the Employer's inability to complete simple tasks - to the extent of forgetting what she actually went into a room to do - will not be deemed helpful and may result in withholding of biscuit and Diet Coke privileges.
• Negotiation skills: Useful. Especially when dealing with complicated situations such as whose turn it is to use the Megasword Power Ranger today, or why the joint account is overdrawn yet again this month. And why the Amex bill is so high. (The two facts are entirely unrelated).
• Physical Fitness: Would be nice. As would dark hair, blue eyes, and a minimum height of 6' 2". Strong hands a definite advantage...
• Hearing: Preferably impaired. Although the applicant will of course be required to pick out the Employer's dulcet tones the moment she speaks, from the cacophony of shrieks, cries, crashes, children's tv and indy radio station music that form the standard levels of background noise in the Employer's household. 
• Multi-tasking skills: Essential. Applicant must be able to deal with a conversation on the phone to arrange that hard-to-get boiler service whilst simultaneously hanging up the laundry (hence the strong hands. Ahem) on a dryer that is too small for the amount of washing provided, reassembling a playmobil helicopter that has lost a vital component, and rinsing out the never-yet-cleaned filter section on the Dyson vacuum cleaner.

And here, of course, is where my daydream shatters and the whole Fantasy Secretary game comes crashing down around my ears. Because we all know that there is not a man alive who can manage to multi-task. And we also know that ‘strong hands' aside, what I really need here is not a Male Secretary at all.

It's a Wife.