Remember the line from the movie The Boys From Brazil, spoken by Laurence Olivier in one of his finest roles as a mad Nazi doctor: Is it safe? In this wee rented house, I'm adopting a different line: Is it clean?
Before I moved in here, I nearly came to blows with the letting agent who assured me when I said the house was dirty that 'clean is relative.' I pointed out I probably know more about what 'clean' means than he did since I've lived in 10 houses in my time, and was born and brought up in a room and kitchen in Govan where my family of 2 adults and 3 kids lived in cramped conditions but total cleanliness. Before I moved in, my brother and sister in law spent a couple of nights steaming the dirt off the kitchen and bathroom.
I keep thinking I've cleaned everything that needed to be cleaned here. The shower head. The shower screen. The cooker hood. The hob. The skirting boards. The curtain rails. Today I spent about an hour cleaning the bathroom - again - the muck in the plugholes of the basin and bath had to be seen to be believed. Still they are not up to my standard.
I hate cleaning. Given the choice between reading a book and cleaning, you can guess which one I'll go for. And I don't think I'm particularly obsessed with cleaning either. I'm not going looking for things to clean. Is it just that the previous occupant of this house was very old and maybe didn't see things that needed cleaned so the dirt has built up?
When I'm volunteering, I find myself - though not often, I'm glad to say - in houses where I would be reluctant to sit down. There's the man who appears to have spent his life in his house smoking. Nicotine seems to be running down the yellow walls of his livingroom. His furniture all looks to be covered in a patina of the stuff. I've only gone in once and left sharpish because I had an asthma attack. He is quite elderly and quite disabled and he has a carer. What does she do?
Then there's the paralysed woman whose entire world consists of her bed, her books and her TV. She not only has carers in four times a day but her daughter is her main carer (getting attendance allowance?). If the hall and her bedroom are anything to go by, the house is filthy. What do these 'carers' do?
I've read that our problem nowadays is we're 'too clean,' so that we have little resistance to germs. I don't see it myself. I've seen too many cases where I just knew the dirt was about to take over.
Visiting a friend in hospital recently, I noticed a (used) elastoplast in the corner near her bed. Four days later, it was still there. 'Do they not clean the wards?' I asked. Yes, every day, it seems. No wonder our hospitals are riddled with infections if these are the standards.
In San Francisco I watched a woman down at Pier 49 trying to use her foot to open the toilet door. I offered her some wipes and a biological spray, which she accepted happily. When she came out of the toilet, she said: 'If you're going in there, don't sit down.' 'My dear,' said I, 'I haven't sat down to pee in a public toilet for 60 years!'
Well, I would in Japan - but nowhere else.
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