Housework - Squeaky Clean, Not Quite

 

Housework, that never-ending project that always starts with good intentions, but there are so many distractions and a complete lack of interest. That’s just me, obviously. Some people (other women) can’t rest until everything sparkles, nothing is out of place and a mixed fragrance of polish, disinfectant and Shake’n’Vac fill the air, a little diluted by the open windows. This is the opposite of me. I once saw a quote on a fridge magnet or something, along the lines of “Boring women have tidy houses”. With that in mind, I can promise you I am not boring. My house isn’t a tip, not exactly, but looking around, there are areas of ‘a work in progress’, things just started or not quite finished. It is the multi-tasking that does it. For example, the laundry can be happening while I’m doing something else. A loaded washing machine, switched on, looks after itself. How helpful it might be to have the magical finger clicking skills of Mary Poppins when the grandchildren have been and left everything out.

One evening, over Christmas, we had rain seeping in through the lounge bay window, dripping from the blinds on to the sill. It wasn’t much, just an annoying drip, with no obvious point of entry. I had to squeeze myself behind the Christmas tree to place a folded towel to soak up the water and silence the drip. It had rained constantly for days, so there must be a weak spot somewhere. We never found it, inside or out, and it hasn’t happened since. Watch this space. We noticed loose wallpaper, hidden by furniture, needing further investigation after Christmas, and when I had recovered from whatever virus plagued me for about a week.

The time came. The tree and everything festive, removed, boxed and returned to the attic. Spring cleaning can commence, but first, the wall needs checking. It was simple enough, remove the contents of the small bookcase, move bookcase out of the way – note to self for next time, the shelves are not fixed – I squeal in pain, but mind my language because I’m a lady. Examine the wall. The wallpaper has come off because the plaster is crumbling. A slight tap and lots of powdery plaster comes away building a pyramid shape on the edge of the carpet. All is dry, bone dry. A few spoken thoughts, then dustpan and brush followed by the vacuum cleaner. There’s nowhere else for the bookcase and contents to go, so it is put back to where it was. The post-Christmas cleaning and tidying continued, until I found something more appealing to do. Someone who knows about walls and plaster crumbling has been sent for. This might mean that the purchase of new chairs has to wait.

Housework is summed up perfectly in this poem by Pam Ayres, followed by one of mine,

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed,
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
Music to hear and books to read,
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there,
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go – and go you must –
You yourself will make more dust.

                                                            Pam Ayres

I’m With These 2018 Heroes

The kitchen floor needs mopping
And the beds are left unmade
But I’m not doing housework
While there’s matches being played.

The perfect football pitches,
Neatly mowed and lush and green,
Ready for the world’s finest
To give us the best we’ve seen.

So bring it on, DeBruyne,
Ronaldo and Messi, too.
Fellaini and Suarez
I’ll be watching all of you.

A huge shout out for England,
For Harry Kane and the boys,
I’ve taught my grandkids to cheer
And to fill my house with noise.

Fav’rites Rashford and Lingard,
The skilful Eric Dier,
I’m loving every moment,
Applauding Harry Macguire.

The crumbs stay on the carpet
While the football frenzy flows
And the pots wait in the sink
‘Til the final whistle blows.

Pamela Winning 2018 (edited 2024)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Essence - A Lifetime's Fragrance

There is a perfume that I used to call ‘The Essence of Me’. Of course, it has a real name, Dioressence by Christian Dior. I can’t remember my first introduction to it, but it was possibly in a batch of perfume sample phials my father brought back from a trip to France, late 1970s, early ‘80s. There was another one I really liked but never knew the name. Anyway, I adored Dioressence for its light, subtle fragrance. I don’t like strong perfume that takes over a room or announces an arrival before the wearer is in sight. It was my only fragrance for many years. I had the matching soap and talcum powder, eau de toilette and perfume. Expensive, but long-lasting and I always used it sparingly. It suited my personality, along with my collection of Laura Ashley summer dresses and hippy style embroidered jeans worn with floaty tops.

Sometime in 2004 I lost my sense of smell and it hasn’t come back. I put the blame on chemotherapy, radiotherapy or the illness. A small price to pay for survival but how I miss all the familiar smells, not just my favourite perfume but everyday things, like the house smelling clean and fresh, home baking and the pleasant aroma of appetising cooking going on. Occasionally I think I get a waft of something very slight and not for long, or it might be my imagination. I continued to wear Dioressence. I couldn’t smell it myself, but it wasn’t lost on others and it was still very much a part of me. It disappeared for a while and now it can be hard to find. Other Dior fragrances have pushed it out of vogue, like J’Adore, but I have no way of telling if I would like it, if it would suit me. For now, I treasure my remaining tiny drop of Dioressence and hope to find more soon.

The Laura Ashley frocks have made way for M&S long skirts and tailored trousers. Jeans are a staple wardrobe item, but plain and functional without embellishments, yes, boring even, and worn with tee-shirts or jumpers. If I remember, I’ll wear some beads but I usually forget.

My Haiku poem,

I Miss My Dioressence.

It was a scent of
Individuality
And it became my

Signature fragrance
Subtle, light and delicate
Ev’ry day and night,

For so many years
In my Laura Ashley frocks
Or embroidered jeans,

A hint of jasmine,
With a spicy bergamot
Accompanied me.


PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Flagrance

I'm afraid I've been somewhat short of time in the last few days to do any serious preparation for the blog. That, coupled with the fact that the topic of fragrance has come up before, means that I'm going to show flagrant disregard for one of the basic rules of blogging - never recycle material - and I'm going to regale you all with a story that I've told before (back in January 2015 to be precise). In mitigation, most of you probably weren't reading my blogs back then and perhaps those who were have forgotten it anyway...

When I was a young man, newly arrived in the metropolis and teaching English and Drama at a north London comprehensive school, I met Madeleine (not her real name) at a party and was rather taken with her. She was very pretty, vivacious and carefree, a socialite of the Chelsea set in the decade before Sloane Ranger became a term of contempt.

Although she was a few years older than I, she still lived at home in SW10 with mummy and daddy in one of those leafy squares off the Brompton Road. Daddy was “big in meat in the city” and mummy was the embodiment of Mrs Dalloway. Madeleine (not her real name) was a fashion model who’d also appeared with very few clothes on in a couple of John Boorman movies, including ‘Zardoz’, I believe, with Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling.

We became friends and lovers. She called me her “young man” and I arrived at the conclusion that Madeleine (not her real name) not only used Chanel No 5 – ‘that scent’, yes, we’re getting there – she probably bathed in the bloody stuff! I didn’t mind. To begin with, I quite liked the fragrance because I quite liked her.

However, during the course of our several-month liaison, it gradually became apparent to me that, while I might be her “young man”, I wasn’t her only man. There was the aspiring racing-driver who used to get her drunk on Moet and occasionally beat her up. There was also the old Etonian who was very adept at replicating Queen Anne furniture which he off-loaded to less than scrupulous cronies in the antiques game. I think he kept her in class A recreationals as well as Chanel.

But the alarm bells well and truly rang the night when Madeleine (not her real name) arrived at my house at 3 in the morning, barefoot and delivered by fire-engine. I just refused to let her in – I had to be up for school at 7 – let the firemen put the fire out.

I never saw her again but I have acquired a life-long aversion to Chanel No 5. The olfactory key is a potent instrument in any memory-picker's tool kit and it only takes the merest whiff of No 5 to unlock a sequence of evocative and not always pleasant Madeleine moments for me. All true, and very Proustian to boot.

I had a performance slot at Montague's open mic night on Thursday and it being 4th July, that was the theme of the event. I wrote and performed this new poem, one more from the imaginarium. It draws its inspiration from two sources. One is a fabulously succinct line in an Aimee Mann song about the 4th July being "a waste of gunpowder and sky"; the other is an article I was reading about sexism in 1950s American advertising which referenced an infamous campaign for the new Pontiac Star Chief showing a young lady climbing into the back seat above a strapline that read "Spread Your Legs!" Whatever were they thinking?

1957 Pontiac Star Chief

Anyway, I've tried to turn all of that, hinged on the evocative smell of cordite, into an impressionistic piece that intertwines the lasting power of love and the declining fortunes of the American industrial complex and its motor industry. It's hard to believe that gasoline cost 30 cents a gallon back in 1957. It's not surprising to see that rampant capitalism has left ugly urban scars across the rust belt. Reet Petite is still a great song and one whose success precipitated the creation of Motown Records. The poem might get tweaked, refined a little somewhere down the road, but for now, revv it up...

 

Pontiac Dreams
Another fourth of July,
gunpowder and sky.
Sharp pall of cordite drifting
over the sprawl of Detroit
lights a touch-paper in memory
one more time,
horizons burning bright
with incendiary flowers of  night...

recalling Reet Petite in daddy's borrowed car,
'57 top-down Pontiac dream
and heavy petting one block off Main Street,
you the finest girl I could ever want to meet,
just like Jackie Wilson said
and neither of us wanting to stop
or go too far...

...but then our sticky-fingered stalemating
resolved, transposed to some higher key
by a climactic light-show in the heavens,
our stars, our stripes emblazoned,
our songs across the airwaves,
the future ours to grasp, young hopefuls we,
with brave new worldliness to spare.

Come up the years and...
things don't always work as one expects.
Witness the rust-belt of urban decay
wound around fat America's midriff now,
a monster in the White House,
no-go ghettos, welfare despair,
millions in thrall to opiates
and all our Pontiac dreams
crushed to tangled salvage
in the wrecker's yard, no spangles anymore -
a nation hoist on its own petard
seemingly crashing into darkest disrepair.

A wonder still that you're by my side,
five decades and counting,
my soul, my joy, my pride,
the only reason that I pray to God to live.
Bless apple pie, Motown records, the FBI,
and keep holding me tight darling
through twilight's last gleaming.

 

That's it. Thanks for reading, have a fine week, S ;-)

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Fragrance - In Memoriam

The mornings, a time for toast and cereal, checking homework is in satchel, P E kit if required then sending children off to school. Next would be allocating jobs to the household staff and bar staff, rotating the tasks as fairly as possible and getting stuck in herself where she was needed.

My mum, hair scraped back from her naked face, comfy flat shoes, navy slacks, fine-knit pale blue jumper with the sleeves pushed up. I remember her being busy, hands on, making sandwiches to sell at lunch time and how quickly she could butter the bread; two loaves worth of grated cheese and onion, a favourite of the regular customers.  Our pubs were ale houses, before breweries franchised into eating establishments and takings became target based. Any snacks or lunch-time sandwiches provided by my parents was separate to pub takings and the income it fetched was their own.

Later, after tea and into the early evening, my mother would transform herself into the smart, glamorous, attractive woman she was. She styled her brown hair into soft curls lifted off her face and shaped neatly over her ears. Lipstick, a hint of mascara, a dress and high heeled shoes, finished off with a subtle application of Estee Lauder Youth Dew or Chanel No5. This is how I like to remember her, looking lovely, accompanying my father downstairs in the pub, leaving a waft of her favourite fragrance behind.

She died young. For years I kept an almost empty bottle of her Estee Lauder for the comfort her fragrance gave me. Eventually, what was left completely evaporated and the bottle was discarded. I still have a box of talcum powder, not that I can smell it, if it should have any scent left at all, after all these years.

My sense of smell vanished after chemo and radiotherapy. All the fabulous fragrances are lost on me now. Perfume, lilies, home-made baking, the aroma is all left to memory and imagination. I still wear my Christian Dior which I used to love, and why not? I might be wafting memories around those who care.

I found this poem,

Fragrance

The fragrance of
Love and care

The fragrance that
Repair

The fragrance which
Always reminds of welfare

The fragrance with
The power of flare

The fragrance of mother
Is the fragrance of prayer.  

 

By Gemini Girl on All Poetry

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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