Don't you just love self catering? The last day of our holiday required one of us to make some sort of sense of the mountain of mess we had created in our little Brittany gite over a two week stay and leave it in the condition in which we'd arrived.
This was no mean feat.
Wet swimming costumes lay strewn across the house, clothes had exploded over the children's bedrooms, empty bottles of Rose needed recycling and bathrooms had to be scrubbed. Hubby and I surveyed the damage, each of us silently weighing up our options. 'I'll scrub,' I offered, getting my bid in first. 'You keep the kids out of my hair.'
'Are you sure you don't mind?' he called, urgently ushering les enfants out of the front door with boogy boards and wetsuits before I could change my mind. 'Not in the least, darling,' I replied, mop already in hand. 'You have a lovely day on the beach.'
I made a quick mental calculation, turned the Ipod on full volume and got going. It was the first few hours in a fortnight I'd had alone and you've never seen anybody move so fast. Beds were stripped, the fridge was emptied, and stale croissants chucked in the bin. I had the entire house sparkling in the time it takes to say 'Suckers!' in French. Then I dragged the sun lounger under a tree, picked up my so far, unread, novel, and poured myself a glass of vin blanc.
Three hours later they all got back covered in sand and exhilerated from the surf. Naturally I was there to greet them at the front door, bottle of bleach in one hand, mop in the other. 'Thank you so much for pulling the short straw,' my husband said guiltily. 'Well,' I replied. 'It was a tough job, but one of us had to do it...'