Something to get you in the mood…

 

If it hadn’t been for the heavy rain, I might not have felt the need to mop the kitchen floor. To be more accurate, if the kitchen door had been closed properly before the heavy rain, I might not have felt the need to mop the floor. As it was, when I went to make a cup of tea, there was a puddle of water creeping from the back door towards the middle of the room.

Poppy paddled happily in the puddle, hoping I was going to let her out the back door, to get up to some mischief. When it became apparent this was not on my agenda, she capered around the kitchen, making wet paw prints instead.

I could not think why the mop and bucket was not in its normal place by the back door. I have an aversion to using dirty laundry to wipe up floods, so although the laundry was waiting to be loaded in the washing machine, I left the puddle to inch its way across the kitchen and made my way downstairs, trying to remember where I had left the bucket. (Did I mention that my house is upside down?) Poppy bounced about between my legs and under my feet, yodelling happily. For some reason, going downstairs from the kitchen is endlessly thrilling for her.

As I turned at the foot of the stairs, I noticed the hoover, which I had brought up to the spare bedroom. I had been intending to hoover the fluff from my Monk making exploits off the bed. The deep red sheet on the bed was covered with tiny tufts of purple. The Monk, by the way, is a delight. It is soft, snugly and warm. Comforting and all enveloping, with its marsupial pouch for tissues and hand-warming, it is everything a Monk should be.

I noticed the original Monk, still on the bed with the remnants of fleece fabric, and told myself that I really should have got on with clearing up before now. I folded the Monk, ready to take it downstairs to our bedroom, and took the fleece fabric, to put with the rest of my crafty bits and pieces in the room next door. Poppy bounced about happily, throwing and chasing a stray scrap of purple fleece.

I narrowly avoided tripping over the dog and pushed open the door. Piles of brightly coloured garments, waiting to be sent off to a charity in South Africa caught my eye. I have a new contact address, and instructions for how to pack and label them. I remembered the instructions involve wrapping the garments in plastic bags first, to protect them from damp, and then in a box.

The plastic bags are kept in a drawer in the kitchen, the bin liners stacked neatly behind the carrier bags, which are, as you know, folded into triangles and stored in receptacles made from the bottoms of cereal packets. I nipped back up the stairs to grab a couple of bin liners. The puddle had advanced a little, but not far enough to alarm me greatly. Poppy reminded me gently that it was AGES since she had a dog treat, and that she really was a most delightfully deserving case. I caved in, and she carried her trophy down the stairs, completely forgetting her calling to be a trip hazard.

Returning to the piles of knitwear, I realised that I still had not remade the beds with clean bedding since my son returned to the UK. I set about rectifying the situation. Then I remembered that I had taken one of the blankets that go beneath the bottom sheets. It was on my bed, while the usual one was in the wash. Or was it? There was only one way to find out, so I made my way down to our bedroom, and stripped our bed.

So far, I had a puddle and a pile of laundry in the kitchen, a hoover, a Monk and a load of fluff in one bedroom, a couple of hundred tiny jumpers, bin liners and a two unmade beds in another, and another unmade bed in the third. Terrific!

Returning to remake the beds upstairs, I realised that the blanket I was holding was not, after all, the right one for the job. There is a long story attached, but that would just be a digression too far. By now, Poppy had decided to spread herself along the landing, enabling her to watch for opportunities to help, whilst taking a few moments to relax and regroup.

One of the beds had somehow acquired some pillows that should have been in the other bedroom. As I stepped through the doorway with my view slightly obscured by the pillows, I managed to tread on the nozzle of the hoover, which was semi-coiled like a slovenly python across my path. There followed one of those slow-motion, will-she-won’t-she-go-flying moments, with flailing arms and pillows sailing through the air. I righted myself just as the bedside lamp, caught by a flying pillow, hit the floor and shattered into enough pieces to make it impossible to glue it back together.
Unfortunately, stepping on the hoover tube had also cracked the plastic handle part, so I headed downstairs once more to find some gaffer tape. Poppy came along to supervise and help as necessary.

After a brief spell sweeping up the ash that I knocked over, while leaning past the ash bucket for the gaffer tape, I headed back upstairs, brush and dustpan in hand, gaffer tape worn as a bangle on my wrist. The dog bounced and woofed at my heels, having decided that gaffer tape would be an ideal toy.

I gave the hoover a wide berth as I swept up the shattered lamp base. It is quite amazing how far the shards can travel, even in a relatively confined space. For the first time since we have lived here, I was glad that the floor under the bed is home to twenty boxes of books: at least there was no way for the bits of lamp to go under the bed.

I managed to kick the dustpan over while adjusting the bed valance, so I re-swept up the pieces and decided to take them straight up to the bin in the kitchen, out of harm’s way.

I realised I still had not put the kettle on, which was, after all, the reason I had first gone up to the kitchen. I was still thirsty, but I now had a puddle menacingly advancing across the kitchen, a pile of laundry, a broken hoover, a Monk, a lampshade and a load of fluff in one bedroom, a couple of hundred tiny jumpers, bin liners and a two freshly made beds in another, and an unmade bed in the third. Terrific! I was making progress of sorts, but not as fast as the puddle. I decided I had better renew my search for the mop bucket. I had not noticed it on my various trips up and down the stairs, so I thought it likely that it was down in the office on the ground floor.

I was right. Unfortunately, it still contained the water from when I last mopped down the stairs. I must have got distracted – most unlike me – and forgotten I had left it there. I didn’t want to carry dirty water all the way up to the kitchen, so I decided to slosh it down the street outside. There is always a chance that something unsavoury has been left by a stray dog, so swabbing the decks is a public service, as well as a good way to empty a bucket.

Outside the front door was one of my troughs from the roof. Its bottom had been knocked out by the impact from its three-storey fall, and the soil, plants and bottom were in three different locations. Glancing around, I noticed half of a second trough was further down the street, the plants still in it. The other half was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Poppy, who had taken the opportunity to nip around the corner and aggravate the dogs up there.

Clearing the mess up involved another trip up and down the stairs to collect bin liners from the kitchen, and the brush and dustpan from the bathroom (How did it get there?) Poppy reappeared, grinning happily, declaring that she had no idea why Ima’s dogs were going bonkers. Butter would not melt in her cheerful furry mouth.

I glanced at our bed as I passed the bedroom, carrying two bags of soil, plastic and lavender plants, the brush and dustpan and the mop and bucket. I would do the bed after I had dumped the plants back on the roof terrace and hoovered the bed upstairs.

I didn’t want to paddle through the puddle to get to the roof, so I started to mop up the rather large puddle, which had, by now, started soaking into the laundry. Poppy was itching to get onto the roof, and tiptoed between my legs, over the mop, paddled a bit and then decided that nesting in the laundry was a good idea. I decided that if it meant she was out of my way, I would leave her to it.

A few minutes later, the floor was looking nice and clean, the washing machine was chugging contentedly, the plants were back on the roof, I had made a cup of tea and Poppy was ready for more adventures. We headed downstairs, me holding on to the wall with my free hand, while she wove and jumped and woofed and yodelled. Maybe there is something exciting about stairs that I am unable to appreciate.

I decided to try the airing cupboard for the under-blankets. There they were, neatly folded and ready to be put back on the beds. It was only a matter of minutes before the beds were freshly made up and looking clean and inviting.

A few minutes later, they had disappeared under mounds of clothing being sorted and packed into bags. I find the bright little jumpers and hats such a pleasure to sort and handle and admire, that the time flew by. Poppy was not very impressed with them, and wound around the room, rubbing along the edge of the beds, looking at me expectantly, and finally settling just outside the door. Her nose on her paws, she looked relaxed, but her eyes were alert, and her ears pricked up eagerly: she was ready to spring into action at any time.

As I tied the top of the last bag, I spied the roll of gaffer tape, which had somehow slipped unnoticed off my wrist. Oh yes! The hoover. I stacked the bags, picked up my lukewarm cup of tea and went to tape the handle together. Fortunately, it was not totally shattered, so it was relatively easy to bandage it back together.

I could feel a rising optimism that I almost had things back under control. OK, so I was still one lamp short, and our bed remained unmade. On the roof, my lavenders were sitting in blue bin liners with their roots exposed to the air, but order was slowly returning to the house.

Poppy eyed the hoover nervously. She has never trusted it, and seems instinctively to recoil when it roars into life. She hates the way it scuttles across the floor, and finds the flexible hose very threatening.

“Don’t worry, dog.” I crooned soothingly “It’s O.K. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Had I not been distracted by my urge to reassure the dog, I might have thought through the implications of having taped the hose handle together. I smiled cheerfully at Poppy and pressed the switch. The hoover came to life. Violent, powerful life. One of the best features of this hoover is its powerful suction. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to put the nozzle onto the bed while I tried to open the suction control thingey that was taped shut by my repair job.

As I wrestled with the gaffer tape, the sheet was being sucked into the nozzle. By the time I realised what was happening, quite a large part of it was puckered up and ready to disappear. Without thinking, I dropped the handle, grabbed the nozzle in one hand and the sheet in the other, and pulled.

I suppose it was inevitable, but as Poppy scarpered up the stairs, all her suspicions about the hoover confirmed, I realised that something – my elbow? the sheet? her tail? – had caught my cup of tea. It teetered momentarily before crashing to the floor.
Heaving a sigh, and feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, I started up the stairs to the kitchen, looking for the mop and bucket and a fresh cup of tea.

 

The events described in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or dogs living or dead is purely coincidental. No animals were harmed in the making of this article. Do not try this at home. Careless talk costs lives.

 

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