Yesterday, just as I was leaving the office, I had ‘a moment’ and said “shall have a bit of a clean up in the morning?”. It was agreed that I would go to the shops on the way in to buy essential cleaning things and we would give ourselves half an hour to get the office shipshape and shiny. Between us it doesn’t take long. James gets out Henry and vacuums up all the cobwebs. Daniel scrubs the lime-scaled bathroom. Lauren bleaches the kitchen and I empty sticky bins and clean the coffee stained desks. You get the picture? It’s horrid because we tend to let it reach ‘a stage’ before we tackle it.

We weren’t exactly keen but it had to be done …

Actually, I did go to the shops, but bumped into two friends and chatted for about 20 minutes. As I was paying, I saw Lauren in shades walk by and not particularly quickly. We arrived to find James and Daniel almost finished.

Result.

Thanks boys, well done.

We’re clean! We’ve been scrubbed and polished. Polished and dusted. Dusted and vacuumed.

Three reasons.

It’s horrible living in squalor.The scum rose to the surface so slowly we didn’t notice until it was too late.

Amy is back tomorrow after her six weeks summer holiday and we didn’t want her to be shocked by the mess.

We didn’t want you to think that we were dirty and disorganised.

About a year ago, Daniel chased King Jasper (a large wasp) into our toilet. Daniel had a copy of the Yellow Pages in his hand. The wasp had a sting in its tail. The battle commenced. Round 1 went to the wasp. Round 2 went to Daniel. In round 3 the wasp decided it had had enough and hid in the toilet roll. Daniel raised the phone book above his head, gathered all his energy for one final blow, and with an almighty smash, the toilet roll, toilet roll holder and wasp were all lying on the floor.

The remains of the wasp are long gone, but the holes in the wall are a lasting memory of the epic battle.