Wednesday, March 11/2009

J for a haircut and I to the internet. We come home to a gleaming flat. The cleaning is usually good - sometimes embarrassingly so as when we find that the carefully seasoned frying pan has been scrubbed clean, leading to future hiding of same before cleaners arrive - but today the windows have been washed and the balcony mopped down as well.

I always wonder what the cleaners make of the shower arrangements. We have a small snhower cubicle with a cloth curtain on two sides. When we first came to the flat the curtain was an annoyance, as it tended to be sucked inward and cling to the body once the water was turned on, bringing to mind old convent accounts of nuns piously washing themselves beneath concealing shifts. Our solution has been to fill 3 large (1.5 litre) water bottles and use them to stake the cutain at appropriate spots so it's held in place. What must the cleaners think when they see 3 large bottles of water permanently placed between shower and toilet?

The Today on BBC radio features an interview with mp and political diarist Chris Mullin, who says that the political diarist should adhere to the four I's: make the diary immediate (no late remembering and reframing), intimate, indiscreet, and (in case of accidental loss) indecipherable. The last reminds me of the time I lost my journal. It was quite an unpleasant feeling knowing it was lying exposed somewhere, and this despite the fact that it's not nearly indiscreet enough (Mullin quotes Chips Cannon as saying "there's nothing more dull than a discreet diary: you might as well have a dull or discreet soul") and the knowledge that anyone at all could read it online anyway. I eventually found it in the Larnaca post office lying on a table, presumably unread.