airing the clean laundry

Detail of my Astro boy handbag. I don't actually use this handbag, because it's too impractical. And I didn't trip over it, because it's hanging up in my bedroom. But once I go home, I'll be the coolest chick on the block, or mutton dressed up as lamb. Either way, I might get Nick Cave to look at me if it's balancing in the crook of my arm.
I'm sorry for the quantity over quality, or maybe a mixture of the two. Those who sometimes drop by know how I get when I'm on holidays. Plus, there is housework to be done. I almost tripped over a bag today. In fact, I did trip over a bag, but I didn't go sprawling. The bag was looped around the handle of a chair. At least I thought it was. It might have been another bag which was spread flat on the floor like a spider unfortunately caught between the pages of a book. Have you ever opened a library book and experienced that? What was the spider doing that the reader didn't notice, and that it got so flattened? Maybe it was flattened in fright, the borrower slamming the hardback binding together the minute the spider crawled out of, where? Actually, I'm going to put a shout out to my sister in case she comes meandering by. In your job as a librarian, how many squashed spiders, as opposed to pressed flowers, do you find? And what is your reaction? To hastily close the book again and put it back on the shelf for some unsuspecting user to find? Or to gently prise the spider, leg by leg, off the page and discard it in the rubbish, leaving a tell-tale faded brown stain right across the last words of "Gone with the Wind"?


And old men die, I am sure of it, because they don't take the time to clean their houses or apartments, because they think, like Quentin Crisp, after 4 years the dirt gets no worse. That is, old men without family or a cleaner. But there are the mice and the roaches and the plastic bags waiting in lurk to think about. Waiting to twist themselves around the knobbly legs of hapless old men, who then tumble and hit their heads on hard surfaces and never get up.

My father has now retired. My mother always worked as well, but my father is younger than my mother by four years, so he retired later. Also, though it has now changed, my mother fit into that "women retire at 60 and men at 65 age bracket". His idea of putting sheets into the linen closet is to just stuff them in. Now, my skills in folding are minimal. Every time I'm invited to an origami class I flee in terror (same goes for ikebana), but I do try. Folding does make sense. If you just scrunch all the sheets up and shove them into the linen closet then there will be no space, and they will be wrinkled when you try to put them on your bed. Now, wrinkle is not winkle, and unlike Rip, you might not be able to sleep at all.

Anyway, take control, take control, said a friend of mine who was the son of an alcoholic father. Now, I know quite a few of those out there, so to all the friends whose fathers were or are alcoholics, don't think that I'm spilling your secrets. Actually, it's on my potential friend checklist. Did your father drink in excess and make your life a misery? Yes? Okay, step right up, you're in! I don't want to make light of said misery, even though I am. Rest assured, this friend doesn't read this blog or know of its existentence (to the best of my knowledge) and we are no longer in touch. But he was right. The control to be taken is mine. It is up to me to realise this ship has a rudder and to steer it in the direction I wish, hoping for good winds to prevail. I wish I loved housework and could find the intrinsic joy and peace in it. I like to wash my clothes. It's easily done. You can do other things while the washing machine goes through its cycles. But that's about it. Even when I clean, nothing ever looks clean, though I prefer it to when I don't clean, and everything looks messy, because it is. Geometry was never my strong point, but I wasn't too bad at algebra. I have a feeling that the former may be of more use on the high seas than the latter.