Seriously? In less than a week?

Background: We’d had some work done to the house. Serious work, sensible work, dirty, dusty, noisy work that was both necessary and for the long-term good; the kind of work that turns a house upside down, drives you insane and costs a small fortune.

The kind of work which nobody else really notices unless you deliberately point it out to them, though at least it makes you feel satisfied you’ve done the sensible thing for once.

Of course you’d have preferred a new car and a couple of five-star holidays on the other side of the planet, but it is what it is.

Eventually, though, the trucks and the men went away and we got down to the cleaning.

Once we’d pulled down all the plastic sheeting and hoovered and washed the floors 17 times, and spent untold hours dusting and washing things before returning them to their previous positions, there was the re-hanging of curtains and lots more dusting, polishing, hoovering and floor-washing.

My point is that after a week of this, after all the cobwebs were gone and the floors were spotless and the wooden surfaces were gleaming with Pledge and everything had been washed and put back in its place, my husband observed:

“I’ve never seen the house looking so clean.”

“Oh, really?” I asked stiffly.

“You never did? See the place looking so clean? In what, 40 years?” Oblivious as always to the chill that descends in the wake of one of his more annoying foot-in-mouth moments, my husband grinned and disappeared off out into the shed.

For a moment, I was really irritated. Murderously........

© Evening Echo