If you are not interested in other people’s spring cleaning then probably this would be a good moment to go away and find something else to read.
Even I am not especially interested in spring cleaning, and it is my very own.
Actually I haven’t done as much spring cleaning as I should today, because I had all sorts of other things that needed doing as well, starting off with investigating our finances.
I was not doing this because of my Year End Bookkeeping, although I did a bit of that whilst I was scowling and counting on my fingers. I was doing it because I wanted to buy a new dress, which I have since bought anyway, even though I should really have done more sums first to work out if we could actually afford it.
I decided in the end that obviously we wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway, because we never really can. There are always lots of other, duller things that we ought to afford first, but if I bought it then in a few weeks we would only be ordinarily broke just as usual and I would have forgotten about feeling guilty because I have the concentration span of a kitten being taught algebra, and I would have a new dress with which to console myself if any uncomfortable recollections disturbed my tranquillity. In any case I thought that I could always shoot myself if the credit card got out of control.
Please do not imagine that I would really shoot myself. I would not wish to be accused of influencing young impressionable people to think that it is all right to run up a massive pointless debt on fripperies and then commit a hideous act of self-destructive violence. Actually if you get into that sort of state generally you can call Barclaycard and they are very friendly and helpful and offer all sorts of repayment ideas to cover their two thousand percent interest, like selling yourself into slavery or giving them your house, garden, children and all of your clothes and wearing a hair shirt and bare feet to serve the refreshments at their executive board meetings to express your truly heartfelt penitence for the next twenty years.
Also you could always run away. They probably wouldn’t find you in Calcutta.
Hence I bought the new dress which I am going to wear when we go to Manchester in a couple of weeks. We are going to go to a jazz club to listen to a jamming night, at which we are going to drink too much and dance the night away, and then we are going to go to the theatre to watch a rock version of Hamlet, called Hamlet, Hail To The Thief, which sounds rather splendid.
This is also why we have not got very much cash.
I did not care. The cheerful extravagance buoyed me for the spring cleaning, and I sang along cheerfully to Louis Armstrong whilst I scrubbed the shelves.
I have still not finished the kitchen. I am going to have to wear gloves with the pretty dress at this rate, because already my fingerprints are beginning to wear off. I have finished the top shelf, and am working my way around to the cupboards, and actually I was not at all sorry when it was five o’clock and time to get ready for work.
The sun is shining. It seems a terrible waste of sunshine to be in the kitchen, but it will be lovely to have a shiny clean house with tidy cupboards and polished sideboards.
It will also be lovely to have a new dress.
I am especially looking forward to that bit.
