cleaning

Today was a toss-up between cleaning the house, and going to catch Vermeer and Music at the National Gallery before it closes on Sunday.  The cleaning won.  Shame, I'd have liked to see the Vermeer, but sometimes there just isn't time to do everything, especially in a hot summer when every action seems to take twice as long and require twice the effort, and I dread the trains.  I must try and get to Dulwich before we go away, to see the early twentieth century British artists, Nash, Nevinson, Spencer et al, as they only run until 22 September, if the cleaning is under control by the middle of the week.

I made quite good progress this time on the hall, which missed out last time.  I washed the pottery on the hall dresser, and wiped the glass partitions, and scrubbed the floor, and took everything off the hall table and wiped that, and washed the door stops.  I wiped the ceiling and the wall where snails had walked across them, leaving slime trails, and wondered whether other people had snails walking up their walls, and what happened if you had wallpaper.  I fitted a new light bulb to replace one that went ages ago, but hasn't seemed to matter while the evenings were so light, and discovered that we were running out of 60W bayonet fitting light bulbs.  I put down clean newspaper under the cats' dishes (thank you Liz) on the clean floor, and set the blankets from the cats' baskets to wash, and afterwards the Systems Administrator showed me how to check the filter on the washing machine.

I progressed to the downstairs sitting room or hall extension, depending on how you look at it, and removed a broken shoelace the System Administrator left on the table in front of the TV some weeks ago, and separated out the one booklet from Sky which we needed to keep, because it contained vital instructions, from the three other booklets that were merely marketing gumph and could go in the bin.  I emptied the waste paper baskets, and replaced the plastic light pull in the cupboard with a wooden one which had been sitting on my dressing table for about two years.  I polished my wooden shaker sewing and jewellery boxes, both slightly rain spotted since the window got left open in a storm, and gave my little box of earrings a shine for good measure.  The SA managed to find some Brasso in the workshop, and I polished the pair of brass candlesticks we bought in the Netherlands on a sailing holiday.

I banished the SA's trouser press from the bedroom, since I can't see the SA ever pressing another pair of trousers, having left office life.  A vintage stereo stack that got relegated to the bedroom some years ago was sent in turn to the garage.  Technology has rendered it virtually obsolescent, now we both have iPods and portable digital radios, so we almost never used it.  The thing was a dust magnet, and if I jig the furniture round a little I can make room for a small chest of drawers, though a woman I spoke to in the second hand furniture shop round the corner from the poultry feed merchant said that competition for small chests was fierce.  In the meantime the table that did hold the stereo makes a useful home for my pile of as-yet unread books.  I had better check with the SA before finally disposing of the trouser press, otherwise a friend thought she had found a home for it with a local charity.  I'm not sure anyone would want the stereo.

I moved a rug which was forever rucking up and threatening to trip me on the way to the loo at night, and put it in front of my dressing table where it might not ruck up, and would hide the dents in the carpet from the trouser press, and the grubby patch by my dressing table stool, which I am afraid is a legacy of my rubbing beeswax hand cream into my feet every morning, and found a bath mat on which to anoint my feet in future.  It is a shame about the carpet, but I haven't had cracked heels in years.  I would rather like the SA to replace the carpet with oak planks, but the SA was very downbeat about how we would get the planks round the corner at the top of the stairs, and it isn't honestly worth spending the money.

The SA offered to do the vacuuming, and I said that was very kind, although the SA did not have to, since my efforts were not intended to guilt-trip anybody else into doing anything.  The SA vacuumed, then I had to vacuum again where the rug had been, as a fair amount of debris, mostly plant-based, had accumulated underneath.

I wiped the downstairs cloak room, and treated the obstinate lime stains with some vile chemical that dissolves them, and changed the hand towel, and the one in the kitchen.  I washed the kitchen floor, having remembered to vacuum it before lunch so that I could listen to the Radio 5 Live film programme in peace after lunch.

I don't like cleaning.