ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local father has today confirmed he is hopeless without his wife after sending a panicked text message just hours into her long-awaited girls’ weekend.
Dean Hargreaves, a 456-month-old who remains in the family’s 350sqm four-bedroom home with his two children, reportedly complained about having to “babysit” them, a term that prompted an immediate auto-reply from his wife reminding him it’s called parenting.
In a move described by friends as “a learning experience,” wife Melissa had stocked the fridge with readymade meals, yoghurt pouches, cut fruit and labelled containers for every meal and snack. She also laid out clean pyjamas, pre-selected bedtime books and left the bath toys next to the tub. She even got him ONE Coopers Pale longneck.
Despite this, big Dean is understood to have spent most of the day wandering between the fridge and couch, baffled by the idea that other dads can manage basic childcare without the guiding hand of some woman.
“He asked me if I’d ever got my kids bathed, fed and into bed on my own,” said Craig Mahon, father-of-six and next-door neighbour to our reporter.
“When I said yes, he looked at me like I’d just told him I’d wrestled a crocodile. Mate, I’m a big money small town Catholic. I have fuckloads of kids and I live for this shit.”
Witnesses report the Hargreaves children have spent much of the day in mismatched clothes, surviving on yoghurt pouches and Weet-Bix while Dean “works out a plan” for dinner.
Melissa is expected to return Sunday night to a household that experts predict will resemble a bad day in Bosnia, with missing laundry, damp towels and nappies thrown into the kitchen bin.
Sources close to the Hargreaves household say Dean’s already plotted a golf trip with the boys for the spring.
More to come.
