In the name of research I have finally watched Anthea Turner’s ‘Perfect Housewife’. This requires a certain suspension of disbelief to accept that a career-minded TV presenter without children and with substantial domestic help, is in fact a supposedly superior being who runs white gloved fingers along shelves to check for dust. Nonetheless I grit my teeth and settle down to watch.
I admit that the programme did have a smattering of tips on cleaning bathrooms using vinegar or lemon juice but mostly I notice that there’s an awful lot of tutting at those women whose front steps are not stoned every day on bended knee. In the finale the women host dinner-parties including cooking over-elaborate desserts and are graded on the cleanliness of their houses. Anthea, I think, you have missed the point. Far from perfection this is the kind of woman who would send most men I know screaming towards the arms of rapidly acquired mistresses simply for some interesting conversation.
So it is somewhat alarming the next morning to hear Anthea reverberating round my skull whilst I’m in the shower. I then start to notice that the grout is looking a bit yellow and the taps are also starting to grow stalactites. Musing wistfully I ponder whether if left long enough these might count as ‘natural features’ but decide I ought to do something.
I am out of cheap white vinegar so plump instead for lemon juice. Then I hunt out some cotton wool that isn’t the expensive no chemicals organic kind that I am suckered into using to wash my face. My trusty radio at hand – I firmly believe Radio 4 to be the opiate of the housewife – and I am ready to commence battle. Soaking the pads in lemon juice I wrap each tap in turn finishing up with a little round pad atop each tap so they vaguely resemble miniature mushroom clouds. Next, as per Anthea’s instructions, I retire a toothbrush to furnish the “old toothbrush” this and many other household tasks seem to require and which I never seem to possess. Finally I am ready to start the onslaught against the yellowing grout. Only then do I realise that this is not a good idea. You see my shower walls have a band of marble mosaic tiling around them. I realise lemon juice onto marble probably will equal a faint hissing sound as the surface starts to dissolve. So I hastily rinse the dripping lemon juice from the tiles and continue scrubbing the grout very very carefully round the non – marble bits. Half an hour later my radio programme has finished and I am too bored to continue. The grout still looks much as it did and I decide its just going to have to stay like that, wondering what effect lemon juice has on the tile affixing qualities of grouting anyway. I still remember the trauma of moving into one awful flat where once the loo was cleaned it immediately sprang a leak. Lime-scale was all that had been holding the thing together. It was so bad it probably counted as an entire eco-system.
At least the cotton wool on the taps worked. With a gentle scrubbing they came up shiny bright though I suspect that the black residue on the cotton wool may have been as much the chrome finish as decimated stalactite…
