Keeping it clean on the home front

This week I’m enjoying a five-day break from work. Well that’s not entirely true. I’m enjoying five days away from work with the paper, but have found plenty to keep me employed around the house. Living on my own and not inclined to spend my hard-earned wages on a butler or maid, work around the Burgess abode tends to build up.

I was away camping a couple of weekends back which meant a double dose of washing. I was fortunate our summer fell on Saturday, so the washing machine was put into overtime mode and the clothes line filled thrice. And thanks to the sunshine and a light breeze, that left three piles of dried washing gazing up at me from the settee. Sunday’s weather wasn’t so good, so out came the iron.

Strangely, I don’t mind ironing. With a good offering of political chit-chat on the telly or wireless, I can whiz through it without really noticing the time on a Sunday morning. If the telly isn’t that good, I can let my mind wander and put the world to rights. Perhaps some of those rowdy House of Commons debates – Holyrood, I have to say, is a bit more civilised – would be better conducted and more productive if they took place over an ironing board. Just a thought.

So the first few days of my break were spent working on the domestic front. I’ve done a bit of dusting, put a dozen or so books that I’d had out for reference back in their proper places in the bookcase; cleaned the loo and vacuumed the rooms. I looked at cleaning the windows but as I could see through them, decided that no further action was needed in this respect at the moment. So, that’s the chores done. It’s 3.30 on Tuesday afternoon and I now feel ready to enjoy what’s left of my break.

My latest check of the weather forecast reveals a reasonable indication of fine weather for the next few days. So that will probably mean a couple of nights in my trusty tent. It did me proud at Copshaw the other weekend when the heavens truly opened and I remained dry.

I have always enjoyed camping. My tent is just the right size for me, my sleeping bag, a couple of changes of clothes and a torch. And if you make a guddle in a tent it doesn’t take much to make it tidy again. I don’t do proper camp sites. They are too organised for me. I like to go wild. Sadly, the weather over the past couple of years has meant the tent has had fewer airings than I would have liked. So, fingers crossed for this year.

I don’t like David Cameron or his politics. But I had some sympathy for him this week when he was criticised for sticking to his holiday plans despite the horror that was the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby outside his barracks at Woolwich in London. It shocked every decent-minded person in the country.

This was a terror killing. And terror is all about disrupting people’s lives. Putting folk on edge, forcing changes to our daily pattern of lives. Making things awkward. That’s terrorism.

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