Washing up

What a pain in the absolute bottom washing up is! I've just sat down for a cup of tea and online winge following round 1, but have round 2 of tonights battle to look forward to when I can be bothered to move again (which might be soon if the Ms puts on Law & Order.... dun dun!)

I appreciate those of you who are Greek, or rich enough to be able to afford a dishwasher, or maybe even servants, or those of you who eat out of takeaway boxes each night won't really understand where I'm coming from but for the rest of the few that may stumble across my rants I am sure you can sympathise.

And tonight is no normal washing up task, it's a particulary horrid one as 'her in doors' has cooked something quite enjoyable for dinner which is all very lovely when your getting stuck in, but as you dish out the third different type of veg from the third different pan it then dawns on you that it is you and you only that is expected to do the washing up.

Tonight's exact line up of items includes, one largish pan, three saucepans and lids, 5 big plates (there's only 4 of us, who had the other one?), 2 small plates, a pirex dish, 2 rather grease filled baking trays, a large lunchbox, 1 microwave cover, a gravy jug, 3 tea mugs, 3 glasses, various larger utensils included a bloody difficult to get open masher machine thing (what is wrong with the old style masher and brute force?) and of course the never ending run of knifes, forks and spoons - how the he'll did the few items I ate amount to this?

There's some really horrid items as well, ones that will leave little bits of vegetable, meat or other minting things stuck in the plug hole meaning you have no choice but to prod at the plug hole with your fingers, or if the water is looking particularly gunky and poo coloured, a spoon!

Conveniently, most people in this house get into the habit of either dumping the washing up items in the bowl, resulting in the need to taking all of the items outs before you can start filling the bowl with water and the special three squirts of washing up liquid or simply hiding the items they've used around the house meaning before I can have a nice little game of hide and seek before I get to the task at hand.

So I've filled up the bowl, chucked the cutlery in and submerge the opening item only to find I've left the hot tap on all the way through and the waters about 1 million degrees. Never fear, I'm a man and will get through it, as my hands turn a bright red and the first few plates i stack up relieve themselves of excess steam.

Things are going swimingly, all the plates and cups are down and there's only a couple of peas and some weird stringy stuff in the water, but then I notice the pans - they really should have been rinsed first, but fuck it, they go in. Then there's the gravy jug and potato masher and perhaps they should have been too, so I move the bowl so I've got a little gap to the sink below and try and give them a little bit of a wash over so to not dirty my water anymore. "Ah shit!" that's still hot!

So I've burnt myself, my fingers are all prunney and the kids have kindly come in, dumped some extra items for me to wash and left without even the thought of picking up a tea towel or saying "you sit down with a cider, I'll take care of this" god damn. But the fun is not over, as the game of draining board tectris is starting to get exciting. I have a whopping great big pan in my hand but only the space for a egg cup remaining, but if I move this here, that there, turn that upside down and rest this on top of that... I end up smashing a plate!

So I'm stuck - I have no more room, but 10 or 12 items to go and with everyone else claiming to busy my only choice is to pick up the tea towel and do the drying as well, grrrrrrrrrrrr. After childishly insisting for the first few items that I won't be putting them away, I give in and put them in the appropriate draws or at least the draws I think are appropriate, I await to be told that yet again I've put things in the wrong place (well if they're in the wrong place, how did you find them?).

Slowly but surely, the draining board is cleared and the task at hand is looking a lot more manageable so a second wind flows through you and you start speeding through the next few items. However, this is a foolish thing to do, as when you come round to do your second set of drying with the damp rag that was formly a tea towel you realise you haven't done a very good job, there's stains remaining, bloody great Big noticeable ones. Ah well, you've already dispensed of the filthy water which is trying to negotiate it's way through the plug hole so the only thing for it is to rub at the stain with tea towel as hard as you can... But then it remains on the tea towel... And then it transfers to your next drying items... So you decide to hide them (like putting a plate at the bottom instead of on the top) in the hope no one will use them... But they do... And they always notice... The ungrateful sods, if you wanted a good job why did ask me to do it?

And so finally the job is done, or so you think - the Ms wants a cup of tea now, and so the never ending cycle begins again.