I am still spring cleaning.
I suspect these pages are going to get a bit dull over the next few days, because more and more cleaning is on the agenda. This is because the more I do, the more obvious it is that other things also need cleaning.
I looked at the kitchen shelves before I came out to work. They will have to happen soon. The collection of miscellaneous non-matching wine glasses on them were black. Actually black.
I think the fire must have been sooty lately.
We do have dust extractors but I think they might need cleaning out as well.
In fact today I have managed to clean the whole of the living room. This was because I got up ridiculously early and had a very long day to get on with it.
I was up early because the painting chap, who you might recall is coming to paint the front of the house, messaged me to say that he would be there around nine. I gritted my teeth and sucked in my breath and set the alarm for quarter past eight, and had a confused half an hour in which I staggered around trying to remember in what order I was supposed to put my clothes on. I had only just worked it out when my telephone dinged and it was the painting chap, telling me that he would be there at ten instead.
This made me feel growly, but I am pleased to say eventually I made the best of it, in true Pollyanna style, and reflected that at least I could get along with the day, and I did, arriving at the Post Office just as Nigel was unlocking the door.
The painting chap turned up after that, full of the happiness of a bright morning, and bounced around enthusiastically setting up ladders and drinking Lucozade, just the thought of which made me feel mildly queasy.
He has been there all day, with another young man, whom I recognise from his nights out On The Town, if one might describe Bowness as a town, which technically it isn’t because it doesn’t have a market place. He has been a regular taxi user, although I doubt that he remembers much about our many late-night encounters, and he grinned at me faintly sheepishly, as if he were trying to work out who I was.
They set to then, and I must say they did seem to labour hard. An entire day stripping paint off ancient woodwork seems to me to be the most tedious sort of manual labour, although they both assured me that they were enjoying themselves. Perhaps young people have different ideas about fun these days.
Once I had taken the dogs out I returned to my cleaning labours, and actually it was rather splendid. I washed everything, everything, even the backs of the chairs and the sofa. These are made of some twiddly carved bits of wood with intricate patterns in it. The intricate patterns had filled up with dust. I scrubbed them out with a toothbrush. This took ages, and I don’t mind telling you that even the sense of unassailable virtue was just not worth it, and I will never, ever purchase a sofa with such tiresomely intricate dust-catchers ever again.
The corners were horrible, black and dusty, and I captured several disgruntled spiders for relocation to the back yard. Then I polished everything with some lovely creamy beeswax polish. You actually had to polish this, the hard rubbing sort of polishing, not the hasty wipe that I usually do and which works perfectly well in advertisements for furniture polish, making immaculate housewives in rubber gloves beam with delight because now their house is so gleaming and bright that their husband will want to come home after work instead of sloping off to the pub with his mates and chatting up the barmaid.
When I had finished rubbing everywhere things actually did shine, which was an effect I rather liked, and I had to smother an impulse to drape the whole lot in old sheets and quilt covers and ban anybody from ever going in there ever again.
I had to empty the hoover three times, but it is done now, at least until the next time the dogs go in there.
Bedroom tomorrow, I think.
