Claire returned to Anton the Alligator's apartment. She did not bother to knock but instead slipped inside quietly with the cleaning agents he appeared to have hired in her absence. It seemed the best way. Claire spent some time cleaning up Anton's apartment. It was far more untidy now. It seemed that Anton the Alligator did not believe in dirt, in the same manner that fish do not believe in water. It was there and believing in it would just take up valuable time that could be far better spent doing something less productive. Claire had already decided that the only way to get this past the old man was to do some serious cleaning until he gave up watching her so closely. Cleaning is of course one of the most boring things that anybody can ever do. Claire spent a very long time going over the floor of Anton's bathroom with a wet mop, gradually reducing the grime to something that would not encourage life quite so successfully. She pulled out a bottle of glass cleaning spray and went to work on the mirror. Claire even went so far as to wipe down the toilet seat, grimacing at the need to do this, but willing to do her part. She took down the shower curtain and began an hour long study into various microscopic life forms, trying to convince herself that she was not murdering entire civilisations. And so on.

It has long been known that cleaning is boring. Ask anybody whether or not they find cleaning exciting and educational and they are certain to deny it. Well, possibly some people find cleaning educational. But only very odd people who think odd thoughts late at night while waiting for the pizza delivery person to stop walking up and down in front of their house and bring the pizza to their door. Cleaning is dull. Really dull. If it were a knife, cleaning couldn't even slice through the air adequately. It would get stuck half way and you'd have to bring in a bottle of some kind of muscle enhancer to give you the ability to drag it any further. You'd have to do this of course because otherwise you'd end up with a bunch of dull cleaning knives stuck fast in the air at inconvenient angles. Nobody wants this.

In fact, cleaning is so horrendously boring that it ranks right up there in the traditional categories of watching grass grow and paint dry. It falls slightly behind the boredom that sets in late on a Thursday afternoon when you have just put the butter on the toast and are watching the kettle to see when it boils so you can make some tea. At least all of these activities have some good point to them. Dull as it is, watching grass grow ensures that your grass will not get lazy and take off for a curry instead of growing properly. Similarly, watching paint dry ensures that it will not mosey on over to your neighbours house and sidle up to the rather fetching shade of mauve they've just had put on. Even watching the kettle boil must have some sort of advantage over not watching the kettle boil, no matter how long the Thursday afternoon becomes as a result. But cleaning is not only incredibly boring, it achieves nothing. If cleaning actually made a house clean, you'd only have to do it the once. You could say 'Yes, I have a clean house,' and be correct. You can never say 'Yes, I have a clean house,' without branding yourself a liar. This is because dirt is far more powerful than cleaning ever can be. Dirt eats cleaning for breakfast and doesn't even spit out the bones. That is how tough dirt really is. Grass is not like this.

No matter when you say it, you are always correct if you say, 'Yep. That grass is sure growing outside my house. Watched it the other day, it was growing all right.' This is true even if you didn't actually put in more than ten seconds solid grass watching time throughout the day. I expect you can work out how this applies to paint drying. It is more difficult to apply this reasoning to watching a kettle boil on a Thursday afternoon, but if you put your mind to it I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. At least until it starts to boil in earnest and you singe your frontal lobe. None of this applies to cleaning. Try it. Go up to somebody and say, 'Yep. My house sure is clean. Cleaned it the other day, it was very clean when I got through with it.' People will laugh at you for saying something like this. This is because they know that no matter how clean your house was yesterday, it is not clean today. This is what dirt is all about.

Cleaning is boring and eternal. There is nothing to do about it except to stop cleaning. After a few years you will wonder what you were doing cleaning out all the character from your house anyway. In a temporarily clean house you can not even write on the windows with only your finger. You have to use some sort of ink, and that is unlikely to enhance the cleanliness of your house. Unless you have removed the windows entirely. A house without windows is the only sort of house that can be guaranteed to never have dirty windows. I'm not sure why this should be the case, but I have it on very good authority that it is true. A reputably cleaning lady told me this once when I asked her if she knew of a way of cleaning my windows. A brick seems to be involved in some way. I thought that bricks were only really useful for cleaning the toilet. I have tried to never know anything very much about cleaning because I find it so very boring.

There is one thing to say about cleaning. It usually involves the sort of chemicals that you would never be allowed to have in your house if it were not for the fact that they were cleaning products. It is possibly that some sort of conspiracy is involved. Make the most interesting chemicals in your house only of use in the most boring activity. Probably this leads to greater sales or something of the sort as people stock pile chemicals just for the chance to say that they have them. And if that grass ever decides to grow faster than I can watch it, just see what I do with the Drano.

Oh, Claire seems to be leaving Anton the Alligator's apartment now. Hmm, actually she seems to be thanking him quite warmly for something. It could very well be that I should have kept a closer eye on her activities instead of telling you about how very dull and boring cleaning really was. But She was cleaning after all. Watching somebody clean is the very most boring activity that you can ever take part in. Something warns me to hope that Claire didn't know about this fact before she went over to Anton's. I really wish I'd thought it through a little more. Why would Claire want to go over and clean Anton's apartment?