Sunday turned into a day of Doing Things this weekend. Sadly, as is always the way, not quite as many Things got Done as I'd hoped.
ChrisC had also noticed the date and insisted we celebrate St Patrick's day. So we soundtracked our day with Irish bands. We stumbled dazedly round the flat to Whipping Boy, got ourselves in order to the Frankenwalters, accompanied the trip to the tip with the Sultans of Ping F.C., recovered with cake and Divine Comedy, indulged in extravagant bouts of cleaning to the Stiff Little Fingers and ultimately sat down to roast beef with Catchers and The Cranberries.
I'm sure that an interior decorator could tell you what style statement those teeny-tiny little bathroom tiles less than an inch square make. Personally, I think the statement they make is "I like cleaning grout". Or, very possibly "I do not expect to be the person who cleans the grout".
Anyway, the previous owner of the flat had an affinity with teeny-tiny tiles. We do not like cleaning grout, and despite using one of those daily shower cleaners, our grout has slowly gone orange. Why orange? I don't know. The grout in the house I used to live in in Oxford went grey if left unattended. The grout in the flat ChrisC used to live in used to go pink.
Anyway, our grout goes orange. The mother, who is a responsible citizen who does not think people should have orange grout has lent us a steam cleaner (I am unsure what colour her grout goes. I suspect it stays white. Either because it is scared, or because she is much better about cleaning the stuff than I have ever been).
In fairness, I don't think I should have orange grout either, so was quite pleased about the steam cleaner. It turns out to be a thing that looks a bit like a hair-dryer, but with a trigger, and has a natty little brush at the business end. It made the grout go white again - sadly with rather more effort than I'd hoped, but it did it.
I don't think I will ever enjoy cleaning grout. However, if one has to clean it, use a steam cleaner. It still isn't exactly fun, but you get to wield something a bit like a gun and hang out in vaguely post-apocalyptic clouds of steam. If Rutger Hauer cleans his grout, I bet he looks like this while doing it.
(The cleaning did actually take considerably longer than the duration of a Stiff Little Fingers album. Sadly, in the shower cubicle with the steam cleaner running I couldn't hear a damn thing and have no idea what bands may have got an airing.)
So now we have lovely clean grout. Which shows up the patches of grey so much better :( Time to actually deploy that grout whitener. I bought some from Lakeland last year. Apparently it's not talismanic, though, you actually have to put it on the grout...