SUMMER CLEANING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20740, 6 December 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

SUMMER CLEANING.

MORE DOMESTIC TROUBLES.

BY ANON.

You can't tpossibly spring-clean at this time of year." I said heatedly. " It's a contradiction in terms; the time for such pastimes is long gone. In short, like spring itself, you've missed the bus."

Barbara's tones were calm and masterful. "Do you imagine for a moment that I'm going to be put off by the weather?" she asked dramatically. "If spring chooses to shirk, I'm not going to. I've been waiting for two months for the weather to make spring-cleaning possible; now 1 shall simply call it sum-mer-cleaning instead." " But the weather—" I began feebly.

" Has cleared at last," said my ahvaysoptimistic wife. Too late I realised that there had been real, if unappreciated, beauty in the bellow of the blast. These domestic upheavals must be painful enough in town, where charwomen are obtainable, window-cleaning companies flourish, and paper-hangers wait upon your orders. In the depth of the backblocks, where every husband is expected to be an Admirable Crichton, the business becomes a tragedy. This year it was worse than usual, because Barbara had decided that the ceiling of the spare bedroom must be repapered. Such decisions have wrecked many happy homes To re-paper a wall is bad enough, but ceilings have a flavour all their own—in fact, the cloying insipidity of luke-warm paste is still with me. However, the edict had gone forth; obediently I arranged to help, and the house was cleared for action.

Lately it was my pleasure and privilege to watch a professional paper-hanger at work, and what struck me most forcibly was the calmness of the man, the masterly control. With us there is none of that. Every room becomes snowed under with ends of ' paper; tables, lloors and chairs all carry their quota of paste, and rejected borders, tightly curled as the ringlets of some hoary giantess, lurk everywhere, with just enough paste upon them to enable themselves to bind themselves clingingly about your unwary leg. Worse than all, Barbara falls a victim to helpless, unwomanly laughter, and I become snappy. Tackling the Ceiling.

This ceiling was a horrible affair. It was high, and the first business, Barbara said, was to erect a stage. In simple words, I set a couple of four-by-two's upon high boxes, and up and down this narrow and slippery bridge I staggered painfully, arms dutifully extended above my head, supporting, Atlas-like, long, frail strips of sodden, slicky paper, while my wife did what she called the brainwork. Every now and then acute crises arose when it became necessary for us to pass each other upon our narrow gangway ; but the worst moments were those when, inexplicably, the whole damp mass detached itself from the ceiling and wound, tenderly as dream-arms, about my head and shoulders.

Barbara does not appear at her best at these moments. A really lovable wife would extricate her husband regardless of consequences, but Barbara, between hysterical gasps and disgraceful orgies of mirth, showed a niggardly regard for the wretched paper. However, we had reached the last sheet with only one serious quarrel, precipitated by my wife's tactless reproach on the subject of finger-marks, and conducted on my part from beneath the maddening muzzle of a dripping sheet of paper. " That's splendid," she was saying, and I was rejoicing in the prospect of a refreshing pipe, when a horrible droning smote my ears and a bee sailed in at the open window. "Hurry up!" I gasped, for all men have their breaking point. 1 would face a charging bull with truly British courage —or such is my fond belief—but a bee shakes my very soul. "Why, there's a bee!" cried Barbara tinnecessarily, and then the wretched woman paused in her work. " 1 was afraid the storms had killed ..them all. How nice that they're starting to work." A weaker man would have dropped tfie paper then and there. My arms were breaking, my face and hair stiff with paste tnat was rapidly drying, and my neck permanently twisted from gazing upward. 1 suppose it was the over-praised industry of the brute, or perhaps merely that my face has always proved extraordinarily attractive to bees, but at that moment the loathsome inject set to work in earnest. All Black Ardour. The summer-cleaning ran its relentless course, and all might have gone by schedule had not Barbara unfortunately discovered Brunswick black. It had been sent instead of tooth-paste by our local storekeeper, and had lain long neglected, for, when one lives thirty miles off, the returning of unwanted goods becomes an expensive relief of over-charged feelings. Incidentally, from tliij simple fact is to be explained the prosperity of many a back-block store-keeper. However, in an evil moment Barbara discovered it and experimented. The effect, while a little startling, was unquestionably very magnificent. And then it got into her blood and nothing was safe; mantelpieces, grates, kerosene tins, picture-frames, even derelict shovels and dust-pans burst into an ebony brilliance. Once or twice I was uneasily aware of a speculative eyo fixed upon me Bv this time, I was busy about my own affairs. Incited by Barbara's example, and cheered by the continuance of fine weather for two successive days, I had decided to give my sheds a belated coat of white-wash. For some reason Barbara regarded my actions as a challenge. Unawares, a bittc;- rivalry was born between us. 1 white-washed and she Brunswick-blacked with increasing malevolence. Again and again we met, Barbara, pot in hand; a swipe of ebony across her flushed face, hands that recalled the nigger minstrels of our youth; I wielding an all-powerful bucket, in attire that suggested a painful vacillation between navy dungarees and white ducks. " It would look much better in black," my wife would begin, battle in her eye. *" Nonsense. White wash has always been de rigour in sheds," -1 would retort firmly.

Twice it was only a question of my wind against hers as wo raced for onr objective, and once she declared that I actually shouldered her out ol my way. And so the unseemly feud went on. . . . A Futile Armistice. At last we were finished and looked around upon a world that seemed to glitter as an impressionist study in black and white. But a regrottable coldness had sprung up between us, born ot our rivalry, and I was not sorry to leave Barbara for the day and journey to the nearest town, some thirty miles away, on urgent business. For the subsequent happenings I cannot feel that I was wholly to blame. There are such things as the power ol suggestion to consider, and this endless talk of black and white might have sapped the strongest resolution. However that may be, E returned vevy late finely luthci gay, bearing, like the Greeks, propitiatory gifts Barbara bad long wanted a pet dog and I needed a huntaway myself. Therefore, T had bought two dogs, and by a coincidence, that at the moment of purchase had seemed overpowering, one was black, the other white. It was unfortunate that the sober light of morning revealed one dog only, and that of a piebald black and white. My loving thought had been to commemorate the feud and make my peace with laughter. The feud is certainly immortal, but the laugh is with my wife.