Forced Housework

If you're feeling unmotivated, and you want to clean up your house, here's a tip:

Invite the bank over to value your house.

It wastes a bit of the bank's money and time, and it makes you clean up all those things that you've been putting off because, uh, well, um *scratches head* uh-because they're as boring as batshit.

I read somewhere that the Queen thinks that the whole world smells like paint, because wherever she goes, there's some red-faced bloke forty feet in front of her with a paintbrush. Well, this guy must see 5 spotless houses a day, and then go back home to dwell on how lazy and pathetic he must be because he just can't be bothered to do the dishes...

Anyway, the valuer (who was very nice, and not in the least lazy or pathetic) came over an hour early, while we were all red-faced after deciding to take the teenager approach and hide the mess under furniture and stuff. He was a very tall man, with a bit of a beer gut ("A roof over the tool shed" as Terry would say) but he wasn't exactly what you call fat.

Unless you happen to be two.

As soon as Phil the valuer arrived, and Ali and I had shaken his hand and smiled politely, and he'd gone on with his valuing work, Link said in a loud voice "Mummy, where's that fat man? - that huge giant fat man? What's he doing ? He has a big tummy!"

Mummy, in a flash of brilliance, pulls out a Santa Claus toy from Link's toy box. "Here's the fat man, Linky. Would you like to show me how you play with him?"

Link turns and looks at his mum in the same way that a Jehovah's Witness does on a Saturday morning when you politley explain that you think it's all bullshit and you'd quite like them to go away.

He says: "No mummy - that's not him. That's Santa. I'm talking about the huge giant fat man in the lounge room!"

Can't wait to get the report from the bank. The house is clean though!