In preparation for visitor

Aunty Dee is coming to stay for le weekend. She will have one big shock. She will be able to walk in this house without having to duck, drop to her knees and crawl, swerve out the way, or be hit in the face with a wicker fish.

Yes, I have been tidying up (chucking out) as all visitor to Gritblog kno.

But while you kno about all this frenzy of Gritwork, Aunty Dee will be aware of the enormous quantities of crap I have lifted out this house and deposited in archival storage (landfill) only by its absence! Unlike you, she will not kno of the pain involved, so beautiful, clean and tidy is this house now.

Yet there is more! Not only will she be able to walk over the floors, she will have a choice of bedrooms! The White Room (rotting cellar) or The Garden Room (curtainless shed tacked onto back of house, once hiding hole for gardener).

But I am still not finished. The struggle of my own psychology and the demons of the cleaning process yet continue. There are things that remain undone. This is what I must now do.

Show courage. I must be fearless. I must enter the disused office toilet and empty the entire contents of a squirty duck into the monstrous porcelain.

Fear about this has paralysed me so far, but I MUST DO IT. Those stories I tell myself about evil red-eyed rats using the toilet bowl as a portal from Hell are NONSENSE. From this point on, I will repeat to myself: I can do it. I will not be intimidated by toilet bowls.

Show strength. I have the body of a reasonably feeble woman, but this shortcoming must not prevent me from mustering all my muscley power to take an axe to the piano. (Musicians, do not chew your soul in pain at this destruction. The piano is crap, broken, and was sold to me for a tenner by a man who couldn't stop laughing.)

Show resolve. Yes, if the children shovel in soil again to the schoolroom floor I will shovel it back out again! I have a RULE. And the RULE is, The outside stays outside and the inside stays inside. Unless I say otherwise like flowers.

I will be firm and resolute and determined, and not like last time, when I merely look at the pile of soil in resignation and sigh, Whatever, sure, fine, okay, I guess it is a nest for parrots, like you say, even though the only parrot we have got is made of polypropylene.

Show wisdom. I must only pick fights with Squirrel over really important matters like the RULE, and not over everything.

If I fail in this wisdom and start picking a fight over the glue gun, then I will only create pain for myself, i.e. the struggle about whether it is worth going to prison or should I experience the satisfaction of knocking her into the middle of next week when she starts with the eyeball rolling, lip curling, and general disdain, contempt and mockery. (Where she inherited these character defects from, I do not know. Dig, probably.)

(And that last one is nothing to do with the tidy-up, but is an ongoing issue.)

Now, I must stop blog and start toilet duck.