Nocturnal Scrubbers

I have yet again become victim to the frequent urge that is night-time housework. It seems to me to be a uniquely female thing: the impulse to clean late at night.

I was always waking up in the middle of the night when I was little and finding my mum scrubbing the bathtub, or cleaning out the insides of cupboards. Really late at night seems to be the only time when odd bits of cleaning can get done. If you work all day, there's really no other time for you to do housework, apart from a day off, but screw that for a bottle of Mr Muscle!

It's probably because these are the odd jobs that you know you will never be inspired or remember to do later. You're never going to be in the mood to wipe the skirting boards, or dust each one of your ornamental teapots, and you're never going to have the time or energy, so you might as well do it now.

I know for a fact that other girls I know get this at times. I have never seen or heard of a man doing this. Why is that? Non-chauvinistic answers on a postcard, and chauvinistic ones written across some boobs in sharpie.