W2D-011 Ulster leisure-2.txt
HOUSEHOLD BORES If ironing undies is high on your list of priorities, then Lynda Gilby thinks you should consider therapy. A paragon of idleness, she assures us that dust, if ignored, soon ceases to annoy.
THERE SEEMS TO be a legion of women out there who are disappearing up their collective rectum with frightening efficiency, returning home each day from a full-time job but still shouldering the lion's share of the household tasks. They may, perhaps, benefit from the experience of an incompetent like myself for it you are as haphazard around the home as I am, the only possible attitude to adopt to it is one of studied serenity.

AND IF WE are ever to convert the male of our species to the concept of the New Man, then he will need to be confronted with the New Woman who does not dissolve into nervous collapse if the kettle handle isn't pointing due north.

I SUPPOSE THAT quite a few people at some point in their lives, have a Road to Damascus experience. Mine came one evening as I was watching television. I 'd just finished excavating the grill pan, reflecting guiltily that I was the only woman I knew who never cleaned anything until it was truly dirty.

TOLERATING SQUALOR

I had, and still retain, a natural tolerance for squalor. Some days when I cast a cursory glance around my flat, I hardly knew where to begin. So I didn't. Once the dust was readily detectable, another week wasn't going to make much difference.

SUDDENLY, MR QUENTIN CRISP intoned into my living room: "I have a message of hope for the house slave. After the first four years the dust doesn't get any worse." I had been working along similar lines but I had never, until then, thought to boast about it.

I STILL HAVEN'T the nerve to aspire to his blessed state of doing no housework at all but finally, I can timidly come out of my uncleaned closet to pass on a spot of accrued wisdom from the Gilby School of Household Management.

THE BASIC MESSAGE is, I suppose: lower your standards. As Ms Nancy Spain once wrote: "Only a fool would clean under the bed."

I RECKON THERE are three bottom-line essentials for maintaining a healthy household: clean beds, clean food and a disinfected lavatory bowl. And any idiot can change the sheets, throw out leftovers before they grow whiskers and slosh a sash of Domestos round the loo in a matter of mere minutes. Everything else, particularly if faced with a partner not pulling his weight, is open to negotiation or neglect.

I DON'T, BY the way, subscribe to the popular theory that who cleans the toilet is the acid test of whether or not there is a New Man in residence. From the way some pundits harp on about it you would think persons of the female gender were required to achieve the operation with their tongues rather than with a handy brush designed for the purpose. There's no point making a fuss about something that demands so little in terms of time and energy.

FAR MORE IMPORTANT is that dreadful marathon of drudgery know as "doing the ironing". I 'm told that the are born-again masochists who insist on ironing face flannels but I refuse to believe it. Writer Erin Prizzey maintains that if you stop ironing clothes, they soon cease to expect it and any residual creases fall out with the heat of your body.

IF YOU SHARE premises, I suggest you issue a unilateral declaration that all household members over the age of ten are henceforth to do their own ironing. A ten-year old can be held legally responsible for murder, so smoothing his own football shirt shouldn't be beyond him.

AND IF A MAN can fathom the functioning of the internal combustion engine, he ought to find mastering the intricacies of the steam iron as easy as falling off a feminist. Surly, morning cries of: "Where are my clean shirts/underpants/string vests?" should be met with a brisk but pleasant: "Beats the hell out of me."

IF YOUR NEAREST and dearest are unmannerly enough to leave a ring round the bathtub, ignore it. Take showers instead. Eventually the law of diminishing returns will prevail and before it gets to the hammer and chisel stage, someone else will become disgusted enough to clean it.

DEMANDING ROLLS

Must you always be the one who remembers to replenish the supply of toilet rolls? A few days of Belfast Telegraph applied abrasively to the affected part might concentrate the mind of your partner wonderfully. Self-interest is a great teacher.

IT FOLLOWS, OF COURSE, that if you are to abrogate some of your onerous responsibilities, then you have to allow other people to do it their way. The fateful words of any woman are: "Get out of the way, I can do it quicker/better/properly/myself."

I USED TO OBSERVE with awestruck fascination, female friends who managed to keep dirt permanently at bay. They didn't so much live in their homes, rather, they appeared to be at war with them. Only a constant vigilance, it seemed, could maintain dominance over the grimy enemy within.

SOME, NOW WORKING again since their kids are older, are coming round to my contention that windows need to be cleaned, at most, once a year. I work on the happy hypothesis that if I can't see out, nobody else can see in and that's fine by me. Inside, hang heavily patterned nets and the dirt won't show.
