May 2011
In Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; in my house in spring my mum's fancy turned to thoughts of Spring cleaning. The first ray of sunshine to show up the smears on the windows and out came the cleaning cloths. The house was scrubbed from top to bottom, winter curtains taken down and summer ones put up. There was no peace until the whole house was spotless.
For years I thought spring cleaning was compulsory. Then one day, like Mole, I said 'Bother spring cleaning.' And that was that.
But last week, when a bag of sugar leapt off the top shelf in a bid for freedom, landed on the lower shelf and burst, I was forced to take some kind of drastic action. Everythng had to be removed from the shelves, including the seven jars of mint sauce hiding at the back, and the half jar of marmalade with an inch of fur on top. So now I needed a cloth. This meant a forage into the cupboard under the sink. A wellies and rubber gloves job, (there could be spiders lurking in the dark recesses.) Everything removed and still no sign of a J cloth. An old towel would have to do. Upstairs to the towel cupboard, I grabbed a towel that had seen better days, unfortunately dislodging the rest of the towels, which landed on the floor. I'll pick them up later. Back in the kitchen, the floor was littered with several dead green sponges, the glasses I had been looking for, a burst bag of something pink and powdery and sprays. Sprays for everything, windows, doors, floors, cats, flies, you name it there's a spray for it.
Now with three heaps of rooms to clean and tidy, I began to lose the will to live, until I caught sight of the mug Pat gave me, Printed on it was 'A mind is too precious a thing to waste on housework,' and a picture of a woman with her feet up and a glass of wine in her hand. Sounds like a good piece of advice.