On Strike. Won't Get Off The Sofa Till I Get A Cleaner.

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website

www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for my other website

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com for the exhibition A Graceful Death, paintings from the end of life
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me.

On Strike.  Give Me A Cleaner Or You Die.

I am not really going to kill you.  But I do need a cleaner.  Here I sit in my nice big house being lovely to everyone and tidying up as I go along.  Suddenly, in a world changing kind of moment, I had a Flash of Insight.  I don't, I said to myself, need to do this myself.  Why?  you ask youselves with a shrug.  Why don't you need to do this?  And what is this?  Some of you who have been here before, who have had this Cleaner Eureka moment, stop what you are doing and smile shrewdly.

Here's the answer.

• Why I don't need to do this, is because there are more adults than kids in this house now and all of them can understand the concept of being clean and tidy.
• I am too busy and important to get bogged down in housework.  Very good artists don't notice mess and that the flowers need changing.  They usually have a fierce look in their eye and a powerful need to do as they please.  I have the powerful need to do as I please but I do notice the mess and think that I will just put on the laundry and oh yes, just wash up, and look!  Hoover a bit, then I will do as I please.  And what was it that I was wanting to do to please myself?  I can't, by then, remember, but one or other of the Teenage Sons is dying in some corner of famine and so I just put a meal on while I try to remember what it is that I want to do for myself.
• The beds need changing.  The house needs painting.  The food needs to be bought, put away and when called for, cooked.  The phone needs answering.  The dentist the orthodontist the kitchen people all need their calls returned.  The car needs petrol and the hamster needs to be WD40d.  And so many other things need doing, one after the other.  Day in, day out.
• On top of all this the Offspring need to Talk.  They want to tell me their plans and decisions because my help is needed for them to work (buy me a flat in London and I will be very happy.  And when is dinner ready?  No, second dinner.  And I need a new phone.  And a toothbrush.  And a lift to London tomorrow.  And I need to go on your computer.  Etc.)
• So here I am on the sofa and mulling all this over.  (Did you go food shopping?  But I Hate all the food you got, I tell you every time to get blah di blah di blah and so on)

I am an artist.  Even if I didn't paint, I would be an artist.  It is in my blood and I just Am one.  My House is my Home and is an extension of my creative mind and soul.  So are my kiddies to some extent but they are scarily individual and off on their own paths.   I like order and cleanliness.  It makes me happy and safe.  I like light, colour and space.  I like to look around my home and see wonderful things on the walls, in little corners, on shelves.  I like fresh flowers everywhere and I like paintings from my friends.   I like a conducive environment in which to think and live and express.  Such is my home but it takes much work, from me, to keep it ticking over in this way.  I share this home with a Daughter of 20, a Son of 17 and a Son of 13.  I share it with a Lodger of 50 and soon, if his Girlfriend moves in too, another Adult.  Alan comes and goes, and there is room for everyone.  But. I do all the home making and am in charge of everything.  I know how to make the house shine and I know how I like it.  It takes it out of me, and it makes me tired and sometimes it makes me Fed Up.  Like today, I am Fed Up.  To my jaded and cake-fugged mind, everyone else has it Easy. I am trying not to Hate Everyone, but it seems, I do.  I do hate everybody.  It is possible, though, that there is a way out.  Apart from getting a cleaner and having a Life, I can tell you about my Art Plans.

Here they are

• Unlimited funding for A Graceful Death to tour the UK and anywhere else in the world it is asked for.  For me to give talks and seminars and take creative workshops on the subject.
• To paint people at the end of their lives, to be involved in End of Life care and to witness the miracle of life and death through paint.  This will be hard but I want to do it.
• To write a book on A Graceful Death and to write about being an Artist and Mother and Not A Cleaner in Bognor Regis for a magazine or newspaper.
• To paint huge portraits of amazing people like the Jolly Boys, Brian Sewell, Anne Widdicombe, Lionell Blue, Jenny Murray and so on.  All these people have wonderful faces for me to paint.  Oh the list goes on and on.  Wonderful faces like perhaps, your grandmother or grandfather.  Old people are absolutely glorious to paint.  Your mother and father?  Give me some spectacular faces to paint, yessir.  And I will make them Immortal.
• To meet all those on my List of Inspirational People on my studio wall.
• To go to a reggae concert once a week and dance with abandon
• To go to India with the Glorious Clarissa
• To eat cream teas and not put on weight
• To have a cleaner twice a week, one day upstairs and one day downstairs.
• To rule the world.

Not much to ask eh?  Well, Picasso did it, didn't he?  But he was a bloke and probably, from what I have read, not very nice.  Tracy Emmin does it, doesn't she?  Does she have kids?  Both had cleaners I expect.  Well, in my case, until I get a cleaner, I will just have to plod on.  And I am Nice.  Maybe I need to toughen up a bit, snarl a bit more and learn to live in squalor.  Maybe I need to move to a smaller house where nobody can live with me, and the housework is kept to a mimimum, and still get a cleaner.


In the meantime, I am going to go and lie down now and wait for this mood to pass.  I am too tired and weary to have any more nonsense.  And all the cleaners reading this will feel sorry for me and apply to come and make my life easy again.  And all I can say to them, is Yes.  You are On.  All of you.