THE COVID MONTHS | MOPPING THE FLOOR

Mopping the floor has become my new domestic imperative. For years I haven’t bothered to do more than hoover once a week and maybe show the floor a mop every month.  I justified this domestic slovenliness as a sensible way to strengthen my immune system the natural way. Building a tolerance to dirt and germs being infinitely superior to an over reliance on all those sprays that threaten to obliterate any know germs and have been implicated in things like a rise in childhood asthma. No! I embraced bacteria on my kitchen floor. I always followed the five second rule if I dropped a morsel on the floor, even when the count didn’t begin until a few moments after the collision between food and floor.

Now I’ve had a Covid epiphany! I’m a new born mopper. I have to thank my Scottish terriers for pointing me in the direction of this new self. Like many canines they have settled into the new lockdown regime of the pack always being together with gusto. Now they expect what they want when they want it, this includes being constantly let out into the field. When the gate opens they run through the long grass taking the neighbourhood from silence to an ear piercing duet of barking in the 3 seconds it takes them to reach the other side. The neighbours don’t appreciate their melodic offering, one even installed 2 decibel counters that blinked through the leaves of the hedge at them to garner evidence of just how loud they are. So I am keen to stop their vocal vigour before they start a neighbourhood war. But they are wilful, intelligent and cunning and not easily caught. I am usually out smarted and find I have been chasing them the wrong way round the tall patches of wild flowers and thistles. If I can get close enough I swoosh them with my water spray which does the trick straightaway – they hate water. But it can take anything from five to ten minutes for me to be in firing range and I’m rather afraid that they have simply come to think of this as a marvellous new game the pack play. When finally corralled and suitably admonished they sulk. I try to ignore this strategy, I know it’s a racket and I’m not giving in to manipulation. But I’m an easy canine target, I feel guilt easily where they are concerned. So I compromise and let them into the bit of the garden where they like to try and dig up the moles under the hedge. It’s become a sort of open cast mole mining area, treacherous for human ankles but perfect for terrier tendencies.

When they eventually return to the kitchen after their mole hunting (they never catch anything) they drop a tilth of fine dirt, grass and leaves across the whole floor. The pale kitchen tiles turn a soft browny - grey which is not unattractive but feels horribly gritty underfoot. If I’m in a good mood I feel a glow of pride that my beloved twosome have had a great time. But if it’s a bad day (too many emails, too much Zooming) I feel irritable and tell them they need to consider that I don’t have all the time in the world to run after them mopping floors.

I mop with a splendid red and grey bucket that comes with its own pedal powered spinner for taking out excess water from the mop head. You fill the bucket to the line that says ‘MAX’ then you plunge the mop’s long, straggly tufts into the warm soapy water and thoroughly soak it. Next you pull it dripping and steaming from the bucket and put it in the spinner. With the right foot you pedal up and down as the tails of the mop spin in a swirling kaleidoscope of fluffy whiteness. The spinner sings her own tinkling aria - light, quick, enchanting- Papagena to Papageno. I am transported into another world mopping up the carpet of dusty soil in time to the witty, coquettish song of the spinner who laughs at my slowness and mocks my earnest attempts to repel the dirt and return the tiles to their earlier pristine pale grey. She teases and cajoles as I move up and down trying to match her speed and grace.

As I mop I see blue all around, an ocean of endless blue Marley tiles. The tiles of my mother’s kitchen. I have been transported to a much cleaner kitchen. The clock on the wall tells me it is 11.00 in the morning. This is a floor infinitely cleaner than anything I have ever achieved. No canine capers are allowed to get in the way here. This is an endless expanse of sparkling blue, winking and shining from every corner. My mother owns the most modern of mops. It has an oblong sponge head and on the handle is a separate lever for squeezing. She plunges her mop into the bucket and then as she lifts it back out she pushes the lever squeezing out the excess water. My mother loves cowboy programmes – Rawhide, Ponderosa, Wagon Train – she watches them all. She mops her floor singing one of her favourite Doris Day songs

‘Oh the Dead Wood stage is a-rollin’ on over the plains

With the curtains flappin’ and the driver slappin’ the reins

A beautiful sky, a wonderful day

Whip crack-away, whip crack-away, whip crack-away’

She is Doris day in her cowgirl skirt a-crackin’ her mop all over that floor. A modern woman freed from the drudge of housework by this cleverest of new gadgets, a modern whip-crackin’ mop. No mangles, no twin tubs, no metal buckets for her. She is not chained to domesticity like her mother was. No! Her cleaning is easy, powered by labour saving gadgetry, she is taming new frontiers. She is a pioneer, a housewife of the 60’s, a freewoman! No hard, difficult-to-clean lino to scrub and mop, no siree! Her life is all Marley tiles, G-Plan furniture (the bedroom suite is lilac and dove grey) and lunch every Tuesday at Kendal Milne’s watching the mannequin parade.

My grandmother’s mopping is hard, sober & intense, full of anxiety and pain. Her floor is hard to clean. Edwardian flag stones that are pitted and uneven, creating endless hiding places for dirt and germs. Hers is a terraced house in a street with a lime slag at the end. Here the neighbours watch from behind their curtains, passing judgement and ruining reputations. No clothes washing on Sundays. No milk left on the doorstep after half past seven in the morning. The front step sparkling, whitened to gleaming by elbow grease and French Chalk on a daily basis. Left motherless at 7, she was expected to cook, clean and mend clothes for her father and her three brothers. Her husband was a fine figure of a man when she first met him. The war changed him. He came back from the trenches minus a leg, in constant pain and with shell shock. A stern, unyielding disciplinarian, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ was how he fashioned his parenting.

Her name is Florence but people call her Flo.  Her bucket is metal. It is a heavy, durable, sensible bucket that will last a lifetime if it is looked after properly. She always scrubs her floor first on her hands and knees. Using the scrubbing brush is how you get the floor really clean; elbow grease is the only way to get rid of the dirt. Only for the final rinse does the mop come out, providing clean, soap-free water.  She takes pride but no pleasure in her cleaning. Dour, she rarely laughs. She allows herself half a pound of aniseed drops each week. They come in a white paper bag which she gets from the sweet shop on the main road. By the end of the week they are starting to stick together. After tea on the night she has scrubbed the floor she permits herself to take the bag out of the top cupboard and reach inside for one which she makes last for 20 minutes. Her music is strong, heavy, upright; proof of a life sacrificed on the altar of duty and hard work amidst the dark satanic mills.

I will not cease my mental fight

Nor shall my mop sleep in my hand

Til we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land