Cleanliness, Godliness, the Art of Mindful Vacuuming, and Glucosamine

Dear Reader, you may now be wondering if the wandering will ever begin. For this I hardly blame you, in fact I wonder it myself. But many things are not what they seem or even what they sound like. The blitzkrieg was not about speed but about co-ordination. (when you think about it, no one thinks of the Germans as speedy – motorways and Michael Schumacher excepted – but certainly one thinks of them as exhaustively prepared). Today was therefore a day of exhaustive preparation. And because co-ordination is everything, the tramp deemed that he would do the messy, manly work of dealing with filling and emptying the various coloured water tanks and leave me with his normal task of vacuuming. The WLW was to be totally clean , filled with fresh water and ready to go forth into the world.

Now the tasks of vacuuming would seem a small one (especially compared with filling a 280 liter tank in increments of water purchased with a 50 cent piece) but I tell you it was not what it seemed. To begin with, the trampess had to find the vacuum cleaner by lifting the carpet in the dining room and then lifting the floor boards – where else would you keep a vacuum cleaner??? Now assembling a small, compact machine is not beyond my wits, even with the choice of attachments (yes, even in a WLW, one wants the option of carpet, floor and upholstery appropriate nozzles). What did seem strange though was why there was only one metal tube, and why it didn’t fit the carpet attachment. An engineer at heart, I sat on the floor studying the various attachments and the various tubes or hose they could attach to and came to a startling conclusion. A tube was missing, the effect of which was that only one combination of existing parts would function. The trampess would have to consider everything upholstery. Not a major problem, what really is the difference between a light carpet and a sofa or tapestry? Of course, the fact that one tube was missing meant that the vacuuming would not be done in the upright position but on my knees (I can only imagine if Mrs Doubtfire had been faced with the same problem!). With cleanliness allegedly next to Godliness one could only surmise that the proximity would improve if the vacuuming were done on my knees. Now even a WLW is small by comparison with a real home, so the thought of doing the whole WLW on my knees was not particularly daunting (elapsed time is probably less than during high mass on Sunday so well within my capability). What I was not prepared for was the strength of the suction. I was now on all fours, holding the carpet down with one hand, pulling with all my strength and attention with the other and hoping that my knees were strong enough for the fight. No one has put so much mental effort into lifting a few crumbs and stones from such a small space. This was mindful vacuuming. It also occurred to me that the glucosamine that I had run out of only a few days before, would need to be replaced if my knees were to keep the elasticity needed to resume running – a necessity in the land of kaffee and kuchen – especially with the visits been planned in the coming week. Happily in the land of Gesundheit, this was easy.