housework, indoor and out

The housework caught up with me.  I like cooking, and don't mind ironing because I can listen to music while I do it, but dragging a vacuum cleaner around and wiping the kitchen units barely ranks above a trip to the dental hygienist.  But the accumulation of cat fluff, Christmas tree needles and strands of Strulch on the floor were getting too much to ignore, not to mention the nameless brown streaks that might have been gravy or coffee grounds, or good honest earth off my wellington boots, but might have been something to do with the short indignant tabby, whose bowel control can be a bit iffy.

Vacuum cleaners have become real prima donnas.  In the good old days you kept going until you eventually noticed that the bag was full to bursting because the machine began not to suck very well.  Now they have sensors that halt the proceedings each time things are not exactly to their liking.  Faced with the onslaught of fur, twigs and gravel that collect on our floors things are very frequently not to the vacuum cleaner's liking.  The motor cuts back to a sullen whine, and a red flashing light comes on.  You have to open the top and empty its little plastic bucket, which is generally enough to get it going again, though the catch of the lid is very plasticky and I'm always afraid of snapping it.  Today the engine kept cutting out repeatedly.  I stared hopefully at the filter in the middle of the plastic bucket, willing it to show me how it worked, and tried to remember how to remove it so that I could bash some of the dust out.  The Systems Administrator was out, so there was nobody to ask, but I've a feeling that one of the SA's tricks is to give the filter a blast of air from the compressor.

After I'd vacuumed the kitchen, and the hall, and the study, and the sitting room, and the stairs (the prima donna does not like stairs and sometimes cuts out when stood on end, which is the only way to reach the middle steps), and the upstairs corridor, and the bedroom, I put the vacuum cleaner away and hoped I would not have to see it again for a bit.  Then I realised I had forgotten to do the downstairs cloakroom, but could not face getting it out again until the SA had sorted out its filters.

Joan Bakewell, who does not like gardening, has dismissed weeding as outdoor housework, but honestly I would rather weed than vacuum any day of the week.  Well, weather permitting, and she probably does not like indoor housework either.  I thought I could finish off weeding around the oil tank while listening to the film review programme podcast, but as is so often the way it turned out to be a longer task than it looked.  Having to crawl among the hellebores while not kneeling on any of them or breaking off the emerging flower stems certainly slowed me down, but also a quite amazing number of buckets of weeds and dead flower stalks came off for a bed that didn't look that weedy to start with.  I have been meaning to put Strulch down for the past couple of seasons, to cut down on the weeding, and it could do with some manure as well.  The hellebores would really appreciate that.