How relieved I am that our recent unseasonable few days of false Spring are over and we’ve reverted to the chilly, grey damp we associate with March.
Heartening as it was last week to throw open every window to sunshine and fresh air, it had horrifying repercussions. At first I thought it was just my glasses that needed cleaning, but after polishing their lenses nearly out of their frames, I discovered it was the entire house.
There’s nothing more unforgiving than the probing fingers of strong sunshine to reveal dust, grease, grime, dingy paintwork, tarnished silver and mould. I have them all – spidery corners, their webs intricate as lace shawls, a miasma of dust on every surface, crusty skirting boards; dull glassware, scuffed furniture, finger-marked door jambs, grubby upholstery and carpet stains – not to mention the coat of winter glar on the outside pavers.
There’s a distinctly Dickensian air of dereliction about the place. All it needs is Miss Havisham in a yellowed wedding dress with mice nibbling the ruin of an ancient wedding cake. What I most enjoy about cosy, closed-curtained winter is, you can get by with a cursory lick-and-a-promise and low-wattage lighting, but you’re literally ‘shown-up’ in the laser-bright light of Spring. My mood is not improved by watching the man over the road up a ladder de-gunging his gutters and his neighbour giving his lawn the first cut of the season, implicitly setting the standards of civic commitment all right-minded citizens ought to adhere to.
Coincidentally, I’ve been watching a television series called ‘Best House in Town’. Its premise is brutally simple. Invite a panel of ‘experts’ from your own area to come and inspect your lovely home and deliver a critical appraisal of your design, décor and taste. Quel horreur! Properties vary from ‘modest terrace’ to ‘detached’ to ‘new build’. What strikes me is how remarkably similar they all are – vast kitchens, sterile as operating theatres, with ‘island’ units, acres of tiling, (think of the grouting!) and polished concrete floors you’d spend half a day mopping; bijou bedrooms bunged with cushions and throws you’d have to heave out to the landing to get a night’s sleep; quirky lighting and, sadly, with few exceptions, an almost total absence of books or pictures, apart from gift-shop tat.
They are models of pristine perfection and about as atmospheric as room-sets in a furniture store with hardly any signs of human habitation. Who would want to live like that? I know you’d need to square round a bit for the judges coming, but I can think of nothing more invasive of one’s private space than being gogglebox-ed by the public, passing derogatory remarks from their own sagging sofas.
Apropos of nothing, why is so much of our popular television fodder competitive, aspirational or both? Domestic pursuits like cooking, sewing and home décor are elevated to near-Olympian standards and the outcomes celebrated by a sobfest of emotion for winners and losers alike. Surely the formula ran out of steam aeons ago? Currently, pick of the bunch is the cruelty-fest that is ‘Child Genius’, a showcase for precociously gifted 9-12 year olds and their exploitative and obnoxious parents. Don’t start me.
Where was I? Oh, yes – keeping a clean house. Except I haven’t got to the cleaning bit yet. It’s only guilty conscience that’ll get me flourishing a feather duster, running amok with an anti-bacterial wet wipe, dealing with chairback-loads of garments waiting to be restored to the wardrobe and the ‘smalls’ wash left to dry in the conservatory four days previously. That – or the thought of being taken ill, or having an accident and the emergency services being less than impressed with the state of the place.
As I write, a gale is blowing the heads off my prematurely blooming camellias. The sky is gunmetal grey and rain is battering the windows. In this poor quality of light you honestly wouldn’t notice the dust. However, I genuinely must galvanise myself to embark on a thorough spring clean.
But not today…
