For a long time, and certainly just before I started Domestic Miss, I thought that the weekend was a pretext to do work one doesn't have the time to do during the week. And you know what? I think I was, and am, right. I was recently talking to my friend Kev, he who returns home to Manchester city centre after a week spent working in the south of England, and he pretty much spends both days running errands, setting his house up so that he can leave it again at 4 am on Monday morning. What's the point in that? In fact, what's the point in MY weekend, one that is usually spent doing the washing? I don't know what it is but my washing always piles up and up and up until, around about Saturday afternoon, it seems like a good time to start. And so in go the whites. Then the blacks. Then in go the delicate nudes. After that all the colour-fast pinks and the reds. Then the horsey and the dog gear and so on until on Sunday afternoon, at about this time, I find myself with a pile of crumpled everything up the ceiling. Sorting out the dry washing is less exciting than the proverbial observation of drying paint. Much as my iron is an old wreck now incapable to spurt steam, it is always with a vague sense of satisfaction that I neatly pile up the pillowcases and duvet covers and roll them tight all together, so that I can find the whole set next time I change the bedding (also on Sundays, usually). Yet, I still resent the weekend as an excuse for different work. I wonder whether I would feel any better if I had one of those mega-powerful-all-singing-all-dancing steamers that cost £ 500? Heck, I wouldn't even have space for it. The ironing board folded in a corner of the bedroom is bad enough an omen by itself.
