Yesterday

Yesterday the telephone rang. In the middle of The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, as I sat in the middle of my chidlren, the phone began to ring and I knew an adventure could beckon. My big boy ran for the telephone and as I attempted to sound like a lucid adult, the children clambered and giggled and whispered and sent messages to me in ever more urgent ways.

We want to be in on the fun! their bodies and hands and the rocking adges of Peter Rabbit's Giant Storybook said. I tried not to hiss and I tried to listen carefully and I stopped and I started and gave up on guessing. Eventually with much excuse mes and more excuse mes and the nicest kind of chiding of children I could muster, we established that Alice and her crew of immediate relatives would be visiting in just seven hours.

So the cleaning circus began. We vacuumed and swept and wiped and folded and tidied. We folded perhaps one thousand and seven items of clothing and marvelled that tonight, for the first time since the last entertaining adventure, people would sit on the couch. Directly on the cushions of the couch.

I could tell you the story of our church fair couch and the memory of our favourite friend Brian, but that would detract from the real story of the kitchen. Eggshells were being unearthed from beneath pots of Friday night's food project. Banana skins were resurrected from dangerous places where children think they should go and no one else agrees. Pots and pans and bowls were cleaned. Stickers representing where every banana, apple and orange came from and the capitalist giant who made all the profit were rehomed to the rubbish bin.

Throughout the house, shoes were collected from every corner and in the middle of many places as well. I would like to have had a Pied Piper to collect them by playing his flute. Alas he was not available and each shoe was moved by a grade one process of torture. Many many many many many many many sentences began "If you want Alice to come..."

One of us did not like this cleaning game. Not one little bit. She saw all the fun things retreat, get re-ordered and reviled. She witnessed the removal of the banana skins as the sign of parents gone overboard. But silently, stealthily, she worked out a plan. In the room of the toothbrush, the madness had yet to begin.

Brighid had ideas and saw in the soap, a final opportunity to play and to poke. She thought about hair knots and knew what to do. Hairbrushes would work so much better with the addition of soap.

Imagine the rage when Mum did not agree. The soap was evicted and so was the girl.

Bouyed by achievements throughout the house, I opted for cleaning my body as well. Just as I thought the project was complete, I heard the crunch of gravel on the driveway. Sppedier than a moving banana skin, I donned tops and bottoms in the right places and smiled at the door.

Alice is here and the carpet is bare and the fun and the games can begin.