Living with the dirt

No, this isn't a 'How Clean is you House' moan, just a wonder about how long a person is expected to carry on with builders in your house? I have excellent builders, drinkers of tea and hard workers; thoughtful, intelligent men who are helping me sort the problems I have taken on with my first home. It's not my first ever home, you understand, but the first home I have owned as an adult all by myself. This is exciting and frightening. I have nobody to argue about colour and layout, but then I have nobody to pour a glass of red and hand it to me kindly when I worry about how bad the damp in the cellar really is, whether the surveyor was right and it is a money pit, full of problems to discover as the funds run down.

These things are easy to contemplate when waiting for the builders to start. The excitement of the planning, the thoughts of the final achievements shine brightly in my eyes as I flick through 'House and Garden' on a dull summer afternoon. But now in late October when the workman have been here three, maybe four weeks I wonder if the house will ever be clean again, and if it is, will I be strong enough for the cleaning. The only way to cope with this is to put the kettle on, and look up. People mean terribly well when they say 'it's going to be great' and they are right, but as you crunch to the kettle and wash the mugs again there is a strong pull towards just staying where you are and making the best of what you've got. All this aspiration is very tough on the soul.

So off to choose a sink for the new bathroom, and finalise the tiles. The sink is going to be rectangular and the tiles natural. And I will dream of hot showers and coat hooks, somewhere tidy for the shoe cleaning kit and the mop bucket. Small dreams but mine, and mine alone.