Oh, virtue...but only temporarily

Yesterday Keith and I and our friend Tom (who does our garden maintenance) set out for Norwich to do a bit of maintenance at Keith's mother's bungalow. It's on the market, so hopefully our work may encourage buyers.

The main effort was with the garden (nine sacks of hedge prunings, dead leaves, dying-off grasses etc) and for good measure I also hoovered the floors inside and wiped down a few surfaces. Mercifully Tom tackled the lawns and hedge - which last is the developer's original planting, and is a densely set mix of privet and cotoneaster, now enthusiastically interwoven. To say that it's resistant would be an understatement - frankly nothing short of a rhinocerous could get through it, and one of the neighbours told us that he'd only been able to remove his with the aid of a mechanical digger!
NB We were clearly not meant to notice how many of the neighbours suddenly found pressing maintenance work of their own at the front of their properties, thus getting themselves a good view of what was going on. Meanwhile Keith went off to visit Dora at her new home, taking the things on her shopping list (all fun stuff to buy, majoring in jam, jelly babies, mango chutney etc).

We picknicked on sandwiches from M&S - it's actually little more expensive than buying the ingredients and saves a whole heap of time - and rewarded ourselves for the day's efforts with an excellent pub dinner at the White Lodge on the road into Attleborough. I felt I'd earned my chips, so to speak, but it's amazing how easy it is to clean a house with no furniture in it, and this surge of housework and gardening maintenance will probably not be translated into a similar effort with our own dez rez...

The trivial round, the common task...

In a break in the hen stuff (i e domestic tasks), I wondered what Mrs Beeton recommended for the day…

Monday – The home washing
Tuesday – Sweeping and cleaning of servants’ bedrooms or one or two other rooms, and stairs cleaned down to lower floor
Wednesday – The sweeping and cleaning of best bedrooms, and windows
Thursday – Cleaning and turning out of cupboards, and cleaning of passages and remaining stairs
Friday - Sweeping and cleaning of drawing room, and cleaning of silver
Saturday – Sweeping and cleaning of dining room and kitchen, tins, coppers, &c.
Besides these daily tasks mentioned, must be reckoned the bed-making, the dusting, the cooking and washing-up, and all the hundred and one things that have to be accomplished in the smallest of households…

I like that last comment – it has a slightly exasperated tone about it, and I'm sure young Isabella would rather have been playing the piano. If I have difficulty getting to sleep, I count the number of these sort of things I’ve had to do for the day!