Washing up

I've never owned or used a dishwasher. I still wash up in the sink and I follow the routine that I read on some poster on the wall of the fifth form classroom I used at school. I got my first ever OAP payment today so fifth form was quite a while ago. The poster advised to rinse as much junk off as I could with cold water then to fill the sink with water as hot as I could stand. A good dose of quality detergent. Glassware first, plates and dishes next - washing the cleanest first - and working through to the pans and oven-ware. Cutlery when I pleased. Use common sense and change the water when it becomes necessary was the only other guidance on the poster. Useful poster I thought. Much better than the Wilkinson Sword one about how to shave. Until technology invented the Gillette Mach 3 a few years ago wet shaving was always a very bloody business for me.

I don't spend a lot of time watching Spaniards wash up and I presume that, nowadays, most of them use dishwashers. They still advertise Fairy Liquid on the telly though and I know from the ads, and from seeing Penélope Cruz washing the murder weapon in the film Volver, that Spaniards probably don't wash up like me. I suspect that they think that washing up in a soup of detergenty food filled water isn't a particularly good idea. They seem to rinse and wash under a running tap using one of those sponge scourers loaded with detergent.

This revelation came to me as I was brushing up the white mulberries from our path using the British pile and shovel method I described in a blog ages ago. Ah, the exoticism of a life abroad!

Knee high to a grasshopper

Do you think there's a cultural element to how we sweep up?

Just after the tiniest of earthquakes, yesterday evening, we had a bit of a downpour. It didn't last long but there was sufficient rain for our guttering to leak. So today I was on gutter cleaning. The mud from the gutter had to be swilled and swept from the interior patio and, because I was now mud spattered, damp and sweaty I thought, masochistically, to clear away the rotting peaches from under the tree and then to sweep the front yard.

The usual Spanish dustpan is like the one in the photo or maybe a plastic version of it. The way most people I see around me sweep up is to brush with one hand and collect with the other. I don't seem able to do that. I've tried but it  just doesn't seem natural. I prefer to sweep the debris into a pile and then to sweep the pile into the dustpan. It's the way that I've always done it. Learned at my mother's knee.