Monday 10 December 2007

The domestic non-genius

Just a quick update on all that Blog Readability Test nonsense: it turns out that the whole thing was not only a load of old tosh, but some kind of Google rating scam to boot. See Topsyturvydom for all the technical details. Basically, the message is: don't go there, don't do it, and, whatever you do, don't get the badge to prove it!

Even I'd noticed that the 'Test' didn't seem in any way linked to, or mentioned on, the website it purported to be part of. But once again, old fuzzy-brain here didn't go the extra mile and ask 'why not?' People exhibiting greater intellectual rigour have worked the whole thing out, so thank goodness for them, I say.

I'm just too busy wrestling with the statutory tables for a book on tax planning while peering over my shoulder to check whether the various mounds of laundry (dirty, clean, wet, dry, folded, unfolded and waiting (ha! as if . . .) to be ironed) have started to creep round the door of my study to mock me in muffled textile tones.

Which nightmare scenario allows me to introduce, quite effortlessly, my Muse of the Day:


There are so many Domestic Arts blogs out there, and they're gorgeous to look at and beautifully lifestyley, and make the lowly 'rest of us' all feel duly inadequate, which of course is a very large part of the Point of them, one suspects (through one's jaundiced eyes).

But they are all so completely filled with beautiful, tidy, clean, exquisitely arranged things, that it's rather like flicking through a year's worth of Country Living unrelieved by advertisements for conservatories, stairlifts and home gyms.

Do these people's homes never contain small dishes of assorted Action Man feet, odd Barbie sandals, broken sparkly hair ties, wrinkled conkers and pieces of unidentified Lego? Do domestic artists' children not solve the conundrum of 'room tidying' by scooping both dirty and clean clothes into big armfuls and depositing them in the laundry bin tangled with some festering bath towels they accidentally forgot to hang up to dry before the stench set in?

Is there never jam on these people's Farrow-and-Balled walls or chocolate biscuit trodden into their hand-woven carpets? And - to return to my original embittered theme du jour - where the heck is all their family laundry and why doesn't it dominate their lives utterly, or, if it does, why do they never mention it in the interests of Balance and some small, underlying sense of Reality?


Ach, ignore me, it's just been one of those days.



The tenor of which brings to mind the beautifully printed Philip Whalen poem on Susan's Green Chair Press blog . . .

8 comments:

monix said...

Juliet, I wish you had been with us last week when D and I discussed this very subject over our post-birthday, pre-Christmas lunch. Actually we both wished you had been there whatever the subject of discussion.

monix said...

I forgot to say how nice your gingerbread looks. By the time everyone had had 'just a little sample' of mine there wasn't enough left to arrange on a pretty plate.

Juliet said...

Hi M - that's very sweet of you x 2! I was quite pleased with this batch and it was delicious, but I really do wonder whether this is the 'right' recipe - doesn't quite match the taste I remember. I didn't get that Prousian Claverton moment! What did you think? I'll have a trawl through my mother's recipe books over Christmas and see if I can come up with a more authentic version. (Mind you, back in the days when I used to go there, ladies in costume made the gingerbread in front of visitors and baked it in the real wood-burning range but, guess what, food hygeine regulations dictate that it now has to be manufactured in sterile conditions and shipped in - which can hardly give the same result, I'd have thought.) At least your family didn't turn their noses up at it, anyway!

60GoingOn16 said...

Maybe all the goddesses have lesser goddesses (or gods) trailing in their wake, clearing up the trail of detritus. But I guess they're so organised that they and their loved ones don't leave a trail in the first place. Anyway, whatever their secret is, it is unknown at this particular dwelling which, right now, resembles something like the wreck of the Hesperus. And I no longer have the excuse of children at home. Any mess that accumulates is mine and mine alone. (With a bit of help from all the animals.)

However, I do now have a nice new oak floor in the sunniest room of the house and I have promised the builder that I will keep that room tidy, once he has taken away the debris.

Juliet said...

Hi D - very pleased to hear that your lovely new floor is intalled. Pics from all angles on blog please!!!

Sorry about all the moaning - I fear I should think of adding the word 'Grumpy' to the title of my blog - I'm just an incompetent who has never mastered the drying/folding/ironing/putting away sequence on the home laundry front before being overwhelmed by the next wave of filthy, muddy stuff and the cries of 'why aren't there any clean towels?' (the answer to that one has already been outlined above). There's probably a course I could go on. Maybe I could get a government grant!?

Juliet said...

. . . and for 'Prousian' above please read 'Proustian'. This woman can't even bloomin' SPELL, let alone get to trips with the ironing board . . .

monix said...

Now, now, Juliet, there's no need to go on trips with the wretched ironing board, much better to leave it at home! I bet your home is just that, relaxed and welcoming unlike some of those pristine places we glimpse. If you ever come to visit me, please give me plenty of warning so that I can clean up our mess!

Juliet said...

sigh . . . for 'trips' above, please read 'grips' . . .