Cleaning

Ste Lydie
Yesterday's weather: mixed but no rain. Warm.

Warning: You may not wish to continue reading this if you are an arachnophobe.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to 'deep clean' the cellar, or cave in French. Unusually in our house, it is the room next to our kitchen which was created many, many years ago from half of the cave space. We use it as a utility room, larder and general store/dumping ground but returning some cheese to the fridge after lunch I noticed a strange smell, so I thought I should give it a good clean. We have occasionally had a mouse in there, not recently since the cats are such good mousers, but you never know if one of the little critters has managed to get in during the night and popped it's clogs, so to speak.

As our house is built into the side of a hill the back of the cave is bedrock and it's full of little holes. I started at the back to work forwards. I must admit that I don't do a full clean in there very often, but we did do one just a couple of months ago. However, I think the entire spider population of France had heard how infrequently I clean the back wall and they had all taken up residence. Ugh.

I really don't like spiders, although I do appreciate the fact that they help keep the fly population down. I was very gentle with them, I hoovered them up into a bagless hoover and emptied them into the garden from where, no doubt they are making their way back 'home'.

Oh, as for the smell, yes I did locate it. It was the hard boiled eggs I had put in the fridge earlier. I forgot to cover them with cling wrap but I have done now and the fridge and cave smell much sweeter.