It is five in the morning, it is absolutely bloody freezing, there’s this horrible white pile on the floor and I just know that I am in serious trouble. No one will believe the truth that the tin of Andrews took on a malevolent life of its own; it simply flew out of my shaking hands and deposited its entire contents onto the floor. They might impute that I was somehow to blame in not concentrating fully on the matter at hand. I never see the justice of this – who wants to devote 100% of their attention to dull mundane things when they can be thinking of higher culture, art, metaphysical philosophy or, in this particular case, the lovely Cote de Pablo?
When the gleaming white pile first appeared on the floor, when it manifested itself as it were (note the lack of human agency in all this – I’m working on the case for my defence), my first thought was that there must be some kind of tool to deal with situations of this sort. Actually, that’s not quite true. My very first thought was “Isn’t that interesting?” On stepping out of the heap of liver salts, I left behind two clearly defined footprints with a rather elegant symmetrical kind of blast pattern around them. At the edges there were what resembled vapour trails or, perhaps, those very fine, wispy clouds you get just before a typhoon. The thing was a bit Rothko-ish and vaguely reminiscent of the cover of a copy of Robinson Crusoe I once had. I was quite tempted to take a few photographs, but time was pressing and it was simply too cold.
Back to practicalities and domestic implements (neither my strong suit). The hoover was the obvious weapon of choice but was entirely out of the question as it would have woken up my wife. Besides, it might have been dangerous; liver salts are quite volatile and who knows what horrors might be unleashed if they became moist in the confined inner compartment of a vacuum cleaner. It doesn’t bear thinking about really.
A dustpan and brush then sprang to mind. I’ve rarely if ever actually handled one, but it seemed the thing to use on such occasions. However, being somewhat less than familiar with the contents of the tool cupboard, I opted for large broom and set to work.
The problem then was whether to concentrate the pile in order to somehow gather it up or to try to dissipate it evenly across the floor. The latter approach seemed the more appropriate to the white-pile exigency. It avoided the need for a gathering operation – the stuff would simply gather itself in the daily kitchen comings and goings – and I’d be back in bed in no time. There also seemed a poetic justice in this. After all, given that the stuff’s being on the floor wasn’t really my fault , it was only right that it should assist in the process of clearing itself up.
It transpires that spreading liver salts evenly across a kitchen floor is not a very sensible thing to do. It is somehow both sticky and crunchy. An interesting tactile effect from an aesthetic point of view; but bound to get me into even more trouble. My next ploy was to reconstruct the stuff into a more concentrated heap and hide it near the skirting boards so that I could discretely hoover it up later. The snag was that the skirting boards are painted a dark brown and the reconstituted heap was a still gleaming white. I tried camouflaging it with a thin layer of coffee powder, but started to feel a mite guilty. There was a nasty element of deception in all this and it was – albeit unjustly – my mess.
It is now six in the morning and it is still bloody freezing. I have spent the last half hour transferring the salts into an ashtray, pinch by pinch. Time is pressing, hypothermia surely setting in and the pile doesn’t seem a whole lot smaller. Perhaps if I used the broom to spread the remaining stuff evenly round the corners of the room it wouldn’t be noticed?
