et in Arcadia ego

Finally, the housework caught up with me.  One might have expected that on a day that was warm and sunny, albeit blowing half a gale, I'd have been pulling up horsetail, or finishing planting up the bog, or moving the pots of geraniums out of the greenhouse.  I didn't like to risk moving them outside until last week, in case of one final overnight frost.  However, I wasn't doing any of these things, but spending a nice day cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming cat fur off the sitting room, and going to Tesco to buy courgettes and creme fraiche.

The immediate trigger for such a perverse outbreak of domesticity was that I'd invited a friend to supper, while the Systems Administrator is off with a friend at Trent Bridge.  I try to be careful not to mention to guests that I've spent the day of their visit cleaning, or that I don't like cleaning very much, since this would sound ungracious, and the cleaning isn't their fault.  The house needs to be cleaned periodically, so an impending visit doesn't create the necessity for housework, merely determines the timing of it.  In fact, given that I don't like cleaning, it's just as well that we do occasionally invite people round and are nudged into doing something about the state of the kitchen floor and the clouds of cat fur before they become a health hazard.

I like having a clean house, or at least a cleaner house.  Shiny cupboard fronts, crumb-free worktops, rugs that don't have an additional layer of fur overlaying the ethnic weave beneath, walls that aren't fretted with odd strands of cat hair, non-sticky place mats, clean hand towels, the loo smelling vaguely and reassuringly of Toilet Duck, side tables that aren't lightly spotted with red wine, light shades that don't suddenly and embarrassingly reveal themselves to contain a layer of detritus consisting of small dead flies, dust and more cat fur.  When I have accomplished these things I feel cleaner and shinier myself, reassured that chaos has been thrust back along with the vague possibility of infection.  It feels virtuous and comforting and nice.  I just don't like cleaning

Maybe I would like it more if I were better at it, or did it oftener and more conscientiously so that the end results were more impressive.  After an hour of scrubbing at the grease spots on the Aga, using two different sorts of proprietary cleaning product, one for chrome and steel and the other for enamel, and chasing dust and cat fur round it, I have to admit to myself that it is still not like the ones in the showroom, or in other people's houses who don't have four cats, and employ a competent cleaner, or wipe their Aga with proper Aga cleaning pastes oftener than once every three weeks.  Maybe because it is an electric one it seems to carry a static charge that attracts dust, and cat fur, and after an hour of wiping I can still see odd strands, and tide marks where the last swipe of the cloth got to, while there are still deposits around the hinges of the top plates which it would take me the rest of the day to remove, and I don't have the rest of the day.  It isn't really a clean Aga at all, just a lot shinier than it was, and it will have to do, just as the draining board and the sink will have to do, because to get them back to a showroom state of shininess would require the application of at least an entire bottle of limescale remover.  I don't really want that much industrial chemical running down into the septic tank, and I don't have the rest of the afternoon to spend scouring.

It's the same with the vacuuming.  I go diligently round and round the room, trying and failing to avoid getting the flex wound round the furniture and my legs.  A great deal of fluff came off the carpets and the pouffes today, even though the Systems Administrator gave it all a vacuum only a week ago.  After I have put the vacuum cleaner away I see bits that I missed, like the ethnic rug on the table in the downstairs sitting room which I completely overlooked, while new random bits of fur and dirt have appeared and settled in the time it took me to walk upstairs, open the spare room door, and put the vacuum cleaner away.  If we were to vacuum the house oftener maybe there wouldn't be such a reservoir of fluff lurking.  Maybe I would have a better routine and not forget the downstairs table.  Maybe the vacuumed house would look really, sparklingly clean, instead of merely appearing less obviously grubby.

In Poussin's pastoral paintings, shepherds gather around a tomb on which is inscribed Virgil's warning, et in Arcadia ego.  So it is here with housework.  Even in the middle of the rustic idyll, housework lurks.  I will never do enough of it, and it will never go away.  Tomorrow I am not going to clean the dust off the cases of the CDs racked under the stairs, even though they are very dusty.  Instead, I am going to move the geraniums out of the greenhouse.