More house cleaning. Oh what fun.

I set myself the target of completing the ground floor today and tackling the rest tomorrow. Anything which presented difficulties I therefore simply transported upstairs, rendering it a problem to be dealt with in the morning.

The bottom half of the building is now gleaming. I even went so far as to vacuum up the pine needles which have carpetted my living room since I took my Christmas tree down in February. Unfortunately my vacuum cleaner is rubbish, and only the hose attachment seems to work at all, which made the whole operation very similar - and in another, much more real sense, not at all similar - to painting the Forth Bridge with an eyeliner pencil.

After all that hard work I felt that I’d earned a pizza. Not that I usually feel obligated to earn my pizzas, of course. Now, usually when my pizzas arrived, I’m so ashamed of my grime that I sort of poke my head around a narrow gap in the door like a little old lady who lives on her own in a cottage in the woods and can see a hairy visitor with a wet nose through the letterbox. But today I opened the door wide and proudly, standing back for the delivery chap to admire my tidy, vacuumed hallway. I fully expected him to say “My, what a delightfully well kept home you have! It must be wonderful to wake up in such a clean environment!” but instead he said “Here’s your pizza", which come to think of it I prefer.

Tomorrow I complete the job, putting me in a position to call the landlord and get him to come round and fix the plumbing. Which is all very useful and it will be nice to have it done, but it makes for a pretty rubbish weekend.