By: Blonde Two

Earlier this week I was doing the Christmas cleaning (good exercise but no fresh air). You know the sort of thing, hoover the kitchen table (I often do this), mop the kitchen door (there is video evidence of this) etc. In our house some cleaning only happens at Christmas; for example the mopping of the kitchen floor traditionally occurs on December 23rd.

I have decided that some cleaning tasks should carry their own risk assessment. Those who regularly work outdoors with young people will know the sort of thing: name the risk – mutter about too much paperwork – minimise the risk.

This particular cleaning risk was entering the shower with the dual intentions of a) Cleaning the shower, b) Washing hair colour off the places where it shouldn’t be. I realised my error very quickly when whilst bending over to squirt ‘Silly-Name-Cleaner’, I felt hair colour trickle into my right eye. This hurt, so I took a deep breath. This led to my inhaling ‘Silly-Name-Cleaner’, so I started to cough. This and the stinging, led to me shutting my eyes, so I moved around to try and rinse them. This lead to me sliding sideways in the pool of ‘Silly-Name-Cleaner’ that I had just squirted. This led to me uttering a rude word …

The cycle continued for a while until eventually I had a nearly clean shower, rather red eyes and a face that was nearly free of hair colour. I am not sure how I might have minimised the risks to my eyes, limbs and dignity; there is only so long a girl can put up with a grubby shower and odd coloured roots. Maybe inviting a gentleman to help might have been the answer – not to share the shower you understand, but to clean it while I went to a proper sit down hair dresser!