Wendyl Nissen: Hell's kitchen

Most people regard their home as their sanctuary; somewhere they can go to relax after work, escape the madness outside their front gate and settle in surrounded by familiar couches, cuddly rugs and people. My home is not that place.

The kitchen spits out three meals a day, plus regular snacks, and when it's not engaged in the ancient art of feeding a family, it's hosting 100 plastic bottles which are being filled with laundry liquid, spray cleaner, glass cleaner or antibacterial spray for my Green Goddess business.

It's a working kitchen. I can feel its exhaustion when I switch off its lights before going to bed; a great heave of its bosom as it settles in for a few hours' rest before someone invades it yet again to make cheese on toast.

My lounge, with its lovely couches and cushions, knows how the kitchen feels. Most days it hosts several shrieking 12-year-old girls after school as clothes and make-up are tried on and rejected and taped episodes of New Zealand's Next Top Model are scoffed at.

I have taken to issuing warnings to the shriekers.

"If you squeal one more time while I am trying to get some work done you will all have to go home immediately."

My daughter takes this threat very seriously. She's been hearing it most of her life.

"Quiet you guys, honestly!"

Ten minutes later the shrieking begins again. I find my earplugs and shut the office door, wondering if one day I might find that magnet under the floorboards which seems to attract children from far and wide.

We also have adult children living with us and they like to watch television late into the night, so when the kitchen finally gets some rest the lounge is heaving with activity, resentful of the darkness and serenity in the kitchen.

My office should never be expected to be a place of solitude. It is always hosting a needy deadline and I am unable to enter it without sitting down at my computer full of guilt.

My bedroom is shared with my husband, an aged dog who snores day and night, an even older cat who seems unable to find comfort anywhere except on my pillow, and two other cats who are providing some kind of respite care for the older cat.

They never take their eyes off her, presumably waiting for her last breath to give them much-longed-for freedom from the tyranny of a matriarchal bully. They sniff her occasionally just to check she's still breathing and get a whack on the head for their trouble.

My garden is a nag and grumbles away at me whenever I seek it out for some peace and quiet. "Dig me. Spring is here and we are not ready."

"Shut up," I hiss. "I'm trying to find some silence in this madhouse."

"Don't come crying to me if, once again, you find my efforts a disappointment. I need blood and bone, lime and some of that yummy compost that you've been making. Snap to it."

"I'm going out for the day," I announced to the family one Saturday two months ago.

"Where?" they all inquired politely.

"To a movie and then another one and then dinner and I may not be back for some time."

Which is how my Saturday afternoon movie addiction started. Every week I book the tickets online and plan my weekend away from home.

"Am I allowed to join you?" asked my husband cautiously.

"That would be lovely. But you have to be very quiet."

And so we head off on adventures before movies. For my husband, that constitutes two hours in a bookshop. For me it simply involves staring at things. Pictures in an art gallery, weird food in an Asian supermarket, pillowcases in a linen shop. Very quietly.

"When did cinemas become rest homes?" I asked my husband as our eyes adjusted to the light after our movie. "It's like the entire aged population of Auckland is on a date night."

He looked around, taking in the sensible shoes, grey hair, warm-as-toast cardigans.

"They're our age," he whispered. "They're probably just getting out of their madhouses like we are."

"Don't be ridiculous," I huffed, taking my sensible shoes, warm-as-toast cardigan and dyed grey hair home.