Where's Mrs Scrubbit?

I could have done with some help from Mrs Scrubbit today. (She was the cleaning lady who helped Mummy Woodentop in the house on BBC's 'The Woodentops', one of the 'Watch with Mother' shows I remember from my English childhood in the middle of the last century.) Bettina, who manages our rented house on behalf of the owners, who live in San Francisco, rang me last night (Sunday) to tell me she was coming over this morning to look at the pool pump equipment with Michael, the pool guy. And, as our lease forbids pets here, this meant I had to whiz Nipper and Yoshi over to Cindy's this morning and lock them in her garage, then race back and c-l-e-a-n not just inside, but outside as well, so there was no trace of our two hairy, scruffy hounds. Not. A. Whisker.
So, as you can imagine, this was quite an ordeal for non-domesticated moi, involving a fair bit of this ...

... and a lot of this ....
... a good deal of this ...
... and an awful lot of this* ....

... followed by a fair amount of this ....

... and ending with a couple of pints of this ...


The result: Bettina and Mike, the pool guy, were here for, oh, seven minutes, and I have the cleanest, most hair-free, sweetest-smelling, gleamingest house ever (well, downstairs at least!)

*And have I ever told you how utterly, despicably loathsome I find the Dyson 'Animal' vacuum cleaner? Don't ever be tempted to buy one. Sure, it sucks up a lot of crap. So long as the crap is light in weight, that is. The Animal has trouble with small bits of broken glass, for instance. And it is huge, heavy, unco-operative, clumsy, stupid, expensive, inefficient, ridiculous and made of plastic. It's too big-headed to get under even the kick-back on the kitchen cupboards, let alone furniture. It blows stuff across a hard floor, so you end up having to chase fluff - and swearing. When moving from hard floor to carpet, you have to turn the bugger off and change the brush settings. You need an engineering degree to work your way around this sucker - and then you have dozens of feet of electrical cord to wind up, hang up and trip over. Mr Dyson can stick it. I L-O-N-G for my old Miele ...