I've spent the past few weeks in a frenzy of black bin liners and Marigold gloves. I have Had Enough of living in a tip, and I want a shiny clean flat that's calming and clutter-free that I can have visitors in. Dad's been emailing me from work to tell me in a panicked tone that 'that thing on the sideboard isn't mess! Really! Please leave it there! There's this Really Good Reason, honest...' and sending me text messages me when I'm in the pub to ask me where things have ended up.
Him: Where's my laptop mouse?
Me: It's where it lives.
Him: Where's that?
Me: [sigh] In the cupboard that you said we should use for computer stuff...
Him: Oh. Which one's that, then?
My father, poor bloke, has been somewhat bemused by all of this, suddenly swept up in the tyranny of a woman waging war against the dust bunnies. (Which, by the way, is a really stupid name for them. Who on earth came up with that? It was probably an American. I mean, you don't get Cobweb Kittens or Empty Crisp Packet Gerbils. Maybe I should have taken photos pre-cleaning and macroed them: 'IM IN UR CORRIDORZ CLOGGIN UR DYSONZ' - but anyway, I digress.)
I've rampaged through the whole flat now, a blonde-haired berserker wielding a bottle of Cillit Bang (which, despite - or possibly because of - the terrifying adverts, actually does work rather well. I banged, and the dirt was gone! No, Jim, not like that...). The living room is an oasis of calm (if a thousand books and five hundred DVDs are your idea of 'calm'), the kitchen is a serene white space in which we can cook without causing an avalanche by unearthing a wooden spoon (though God only knows what my father did to the hob while I was in Cambridge, I'll have to go and Deal with that when I've written this), the hallways are clear and the path through them unobstructed by superfluous and broken technological kibble, the bathroom has tiles that sparkle, candles on the shelves, and a mirror so clean you could, er, see yourself in it. Or something. There's just one room that I have yet to conquer.
My bedroom.
I shut the door on it in disgust, repelled by its lack of storage space and the relentless march of my shoe collection as it attempts to colonise the universe. God, the amount of clutter I own is terrifying.
And, although this is a slight aside, one of the things I've noticed the most is all the diaries. I've found sixteen of them so far, and I know there are others lying around that will no doubt surface before long. The oldest dates from when I was about six, the newest tapers off about halfway through last year - around when writing started hurting my hands too much to be worthwhile and I began making private entries on LJ instead. I have my whole fucking life here, in front of me, chronicled on paper. A huge stack of notebooks, pink and black and purple and green and blue, bursting with thoughts and emotions and memories and glued-in tickets for gigs and trains and shows. The confusions of childhood and the miseries of adolescence and the revelations of Growing Up all here, scrawled in Biro in my handwriting that's hardly changed since I was nine - but anyway, back to the point.
One day I will burst in there in my pinny and my rubber gloves and take it on, with all the force of a woman possessed by lemon-scented bleach. Till then, I shall be forced to relax in the rest of my beautiful flat, and retire each night to the welter of black velvet and unshelved books and Really Important Bits Of Paper that presumes to be my bedroom. It probably didn't help that while I was tidying the rest of the flat every bit of homeless clutter I didn't want to chuck got left in there, but that's beside the point. Obviously.
Oh, and it might have a mouse in it. Or possibly a rat. But that, boys and girls, is Another Story, and I've embarrassed myself enough about it on LJ already.