How fascinating! Do tell me more....

I was too busy to blog at the weekend.  Too busy doing... housework.  How ironic.  Not only that, but recently it's been just one long whirligig of scintillating social events, all, strangely, connected with school or kindergarten and all involving the same people every single time.  Well, I guess they are as bored with my face as I am with theirs.

Talking of faces, I had always thought that I had a good 'listening' face.  You know - interested and animated, no matter what dull facts I am being bombarded with.  Then, several years ago, I spotted my listening face in a mirror.  I was at a party and desperately wishing I was somewhere else. For that split second before I recognised myself I thought, who on earth is that woman?  She looks so fed up. And realised it was me, and that actually, I looked far from interested or animated.  So I took it upon myself to smarten up my image and try to be a more avid listener.  As you know, this isn't always easy, and we have all experienced that drifting-off look in our fellow conversationalist's eye which means we've gone on too long.  My aim is never to give someone that feeling, and it would seem I have largely achieved this, as people will rattle on for hours about the most tedious of things and not sense, in any way, that I am silently willing them to shut up. (Note of clarification to friends, family and regular conversation partners of mine: you genuinely are interesting; please exclude yourselves from this rather scathing analysis! I refer mainly to the dubious pleasure of smalltalk.)

Now back to the housework.  Rather unwisely, I recently told a new pal of mine that I keep my kitchen squeaky clean, to a standard of hygiene otherwise only found in an operating theatre.  Even more unwisely, I then invited her round to eat here.  Got home and panicked.  Kitchen full of unidentifiable streaks and stains, plus scary cobwebs that wisp against my arms in the early morning when I stumble for the kettle.  My eyes turned to other things, like my dustball farms under the cupboards and the peanuts under the sofa cushions. All have now been eradicated.  Please feel free to drop round at your earliest convenience, but make sure you phone me a couple of days beforehand, just in case.  Dust re-accumulates horribly quickly in Bavaria.