The Urge
Today after work, I felt an unusual and extremely rare URGE to clean, to rearrange and to paint and to hoover and dust. To throw away EVERYTHING I no longer need, plus quite a few things I will probably discover I need in a few months time. This ignorable craving comes round only every five years, with dreadful and precise warning signs – the day before tends to involve some sort of breakdown when imbedded in my foot are the prongs of the seventh plug that day, when I realise I cannot see even half of one square inch of my carpet, when every time I breathe in I have to sneeze, when no-one can drink tea any longer because the mugs are gathering squalidly in little huddles in the dark and dangerous corners underneath the slope of the roof, when I realise that from the 10 packs of Kirby grips my mother has bought since the New Year, not ONE SINGLE measly clip remains, and the mirror cracks a little more every time a little bit of my crazy witch-woman hair reflects from its surface.
This urge had me down on my knees scavenging under my wicker bookshelf for dusty relics. I found four Nokia phone chargers. It had me picking the disintegrating foam stuff from the inside of my attic window, first tentatively, and then with relish, scooping crumbly, bitty, mossy green felt between my fingertips. This urge had me lying flat out on my back, peering with great concern at the cobwebs wrapped around my Ikea three-bulb-lamp, wondering how many hoover-bags it would take to suck them into a dark oblivion. This urge had me sorting through every single CD; rediscovering books I never knew I had, and then the books which MADE my childhood – Madame Doubtfire, Goodnight Mr Tom, Flour Babies… It had me rooting through hundreds of old photographs (giving myself two minutes time-out per ten photographs for groaning-over-horrible-hair time).
If my brother has issues in later life, it will be purely mine and my sister’s fault. I found a photo of five-year old Len, dressed up by myself and my sister. Cow-print skirt, brown and green stripy socks, blue raincoat, dark blue feather boa, chunky wooden necklace, strange purple and green hat, and a leopard print bag. Most precious of all is his face, shoulders hunched up around his ears, eyes looking out miserably and not-quite-comprehendingly.
I showed the 13-year old Len (angles and jawline where there never used to be any, newly-short hair with designer cap glued on 24/7, sitting before his computer, chatting to an array of girls and listening to something which sounds suspiciously like very very bad rap. The rappers, I have been informed, are all from Stoke. In the grainy video, all 14 of them congregate in a derilict, graffiti-ed to death bus shelter. The recurring refrain seems to be “Oh one seven eight two….two”, this being the predial phone number for Staffordshire, with the ‘two’ repeated presumably in an attempt to create an echo effect. Yes. I know. ).
He put his head in his hands. It’s not right! he told me pityingly. I snatched the photo away from his fingers before he had chance to tear it up. My sister, when I showed her, laughed for ten minutes. My mother perked up slightly after the tragic death of our much neglected pleco fish, and my father peered and squinted and said who, who??
My little room looks ten times bigger, and I am at least ten times happier. I can tell because my lips do something weird and stretchy which I vaguely recall might be called smiling. Perhaps there are grains of truth in the whole feng-shui thing.
It took around five hours to make the carpet visible.
This urge had me down on my knees scavenging under my wicker bookshelf for dusty relics. I found four Nokia phone chargers. It had me picking the disintegrating foam stuff from the inside of my attic window, first tentatively, and then with relish, scooping crumbly, bitty, mossy green felt between my fingertips. This urge had me lying flat out on my back, peering with great concern at the cobwebs wrapped around my Ikea three-bulb-lamp, wondering how many hoover-bags it would take to suck them into a dark oblivion. This urge had me sorting through every single CD; rediscovering books I never knew I had, and then the books which MADE my childhood – Madame Doubtfire, Goodnight Mr Tom, Flour Babies… It had me rooting through hundreds of old photographs (giving myself two minutes time-out per ten photographs for groaning-over-horrible-hair time).
If my brother has issues in later life, it will be purely mine and my sister’s fault. I found a photo of five-year old Len, dressed up by myself and my sister. Cow-print skirt, brown and green stripy socks, blue raincoat, dark blue feather boa, chunky wooden necklace, strange purple and green hat, and a leopard print bag. Most precious of all is his face, shoulders hunched up around his ears, eyes looking out miserably and not-quite-comprehendingly.
I showed the 13-year old Len (angles and jawline where there never used to be any, newly-short hair with designer cap glued on 24/7, sitting before his computer, chatting to an array of girls and listening to something which sounds suspiciously like very very bad rap. The rappers, I have been informed, are all from Stoke. In the grainy video, all 14 of them congregate in a derilict, graffiti-ed to death bus shelter. The recurring refrain seems to be “Oh one seven eight two….two”, this being the predial phone number for Staffordshire, with the ‘two’ repeated presumably in an attempt to create an echo effect. Yes. I know. ).
He put his head in his hands. It’s not right! he told me pityingly. I snatched the photo away from his fingers before he had chance to tear it up. My sister, when I showed her, laughed for ten minutes. My mother perked up slightly after the tragic death of our much neglected pleco fish, and my father peered and squinted and said who, who??
My little room looks ten times bigger, and I am at least ten times happier. I can tell because my lips do something weird and stretchy which I vaguely recall might be called smiling. Perhaps there are grains of truth in the whole feng-shui thing.
It took around five hours to make the carpet visible.
kiwiqueen - 1. Jul, 01:26