When we got in after the bonfire last night we all rushed upstairs to tear off all our horrible dusty, mite-filled clothes, and then immediately jumped in the shower to scrub away the filthy evidence of the night’s efforts.
When we got up this morning Mark was still so repelled that when I shoved our discarded clothes in to the washing machine he went back upstairs and hoovered the floor where we had dumped them and where they had lain, revoltingly seething with invisible insect life all night.
This was pretty much in keeping with the current mood, as we are now into our third and still not yet final day of spring cleaning.
The children are supposed to be cleaning their own bedrooms and bathrooms. Lucy has been doing hers for three days now, enthusiastically pulling things off shelves and out of drawers and into dustbin bags, and the resulting mess is so comprehensive I don’t know how she gets into bed.
Oliver has not done anything at all to his. In the past he has occasionally tidied up by the simple process of stuffing everything under the bed, but since that space is full, and leaking out guns and model tanks at the corners he no longer has that option and has addressed the problem by inviting Harry to stay for the last few nights.
This has meant that there is now a great deal of Harry-related mess, sleeping bags and stray pyjamas and so on, and it is no longer possible to tell where the original mess ends and the new one begins.
Oliver has promised that he will have a thorough clean and tidy as soon as Harry has gone, but we all know that this is simply not true, and that Oliver’s bedroom, as usual, will have to have a whole-family mucking out in a day or two when I go in there and put some clean washing on the desk and it just sticks to it.
At this point there will be shouting, and poor Oliver will stand in the middle of it looking confused and guilty, and we will all take pity on him and come and fold up trousers, and whisk things away into boxes and drawers. We will wipe and Hoover and polish until domestic order and Oliver’s smile have been restored and the unattractive pile of empty yoghurt pots and banana skins and prawn cracker crumbs has once again been banished from its interim storage space at the foot of his computer chair.
Today, however, it was the turn of the middle floor, where Mark and I live, and we concentrated our efforts on banishing our own sticky patches and long undisturbed dusty socks in corners whilst Lucy went to work, and Oliver and Harry went off to hurtle around the park on their bikes.
Lucy going to work is a very recent development. I suggested to her that she improve her share of the family fortunes by seeking out some gainful employment. She was less than enthusiastic, actually she was appalled, pointing out her youth and fragility as reasons why she should not be exploited in such a vile and unscrupulous manner.
We were unmoved by this, as Lucy is probably the single most expensive asset that the family has, and therefore think that it is quite time that some dividend was produced. Once she has had to earn the seventy pounds she needs in order to purchase a haircut and associated pink colouring we considered that she might feel a bit less desperately in need of one.
Hence she spent today and yesterday trailing crossly around Windermere taking bundles of taxi cards into hotels on behalf of Lakeside Taxis, who had kindly suggested this occupation as a useful method of earning some pocket money for herself. Tomorrow she has got an interview for a waitressing job at the You And Me Chinese restaurant in Bowness, where we are hoping that her loathing of all things manual will sharpen her enthusiasm for working hard at school.
In the meantime we are restoring our house to pristine cleanliness and earning our own contribution to the household economy. I am very excited about Lucy’s potential employment opportunities, although not entirely optimistic. It will be splendid for her to have the very satisfying experience of earning her own living
I bet she can’t wait.
