Everything has a price...

Onkel and Tante Ju have been visiting us a lot lately and every time they take off from the feeding station, they are enthusiastically crapping all over the patio. And some of this stuff has ended up on our patio window. It looks quite disgusting.

I'd been cleaning the patio windows in the past, as a rule. As with most household chores, they get done when one of us slobs, OH or me, really can't stand it anymore and we cave in. OH caves in daily to load the dishwasher and to cook whereas if left entirely to my own devices I can ignore pile-high dirty dishes for weeks and only rinse what I need. I can also live off oatcakes, carrots, apples, o-juice, fridge food or takeaways for quite a while, especially when I've got a lot of work on, before I think to myself "Hang on. A hot meal. Not had that in a while." OH can't -- so he does our cooking. In contrast, I regularly cave in over the state of the kitchen floor, the surfaces, the hob, the bathroom basins, the loos, carpets and general mess, the recycling, the compost bowl, and the laundry.

However, as far as the crapped-on window is concerned, I ignored my strong caving instincts. I let my right wiping hand twitch almost uncontrollably but I did not give in.

Instead I kept nagging OH that it was his turn to clean the patio windows. Two days ago, he caved and did them. I was sat at the dining table behind them and was doing some work and allowed myself to be pleasantly distracted watching OH's towering bearded and denimmed physique doing his manly window-cleaner thing. OH clearly hated this particular chore even though I threw him air kisses whenever he looked. He deliberately took several buckets of clean water and chucked them over the patio window in my direction with more force than was strictly necessary.

And today, he, neighbour P and I were standing in our shared drive discussing the hole in P's drive that the gas company people had dug to repair the gas pipe when I looked at the windowsill and frowned.

"Where's the window box with the pansies and the oregano?"

"I moved it to the other sill when I cleaned the windows on Monday."

"Wow!" I shouted. "You did those as well! Thank you so much! That's brilliant!"

OH squirmed a little. "I wasn't so lucky with the other one. The box fell off the window sill and all the pansies spilt out."

My eyes wandered down. It was true. The green window box sat on the ground, with a few forlorn and broken flowers poking out. My face must have collapsed.

"Oh no!" P shouted at OH, "And you thought you were doing so well!"

I shook my head. It was obviously some sort of unconscious revenge on OH's part for making him do chores he disliked. Make me clean the windows -- I kill your window boxes. But my pansies are indestructible. They'll bounce back.