Sunday, October 21, 2007 Covington: Singledom By Gary Covington Looking In
IF YOU'D glanced through my sala windows this morning at six-o-clock you would have beheld an old guy waving a walking stick, dressed only in Y-fronts, hopping about like a stork with one leg gummed in the mire.
Bachelorhood has come around a second time. Fending for myself. Any worries? Naw -- been there, done that but wait -- there's new challenges to confront. Like cement floors and Starwax.
I'd heard of Starwax. Seen the househelper dashing away with a red-stained cloth. Breathed deeply of those luscious fumes. Marveled at the humble coconut supplying yet another essential piece of household kit, viz. the coconut husk polisher, but never had I done the biz myself, got down on my hands and knees and Starwaxed in person.
It's hard work. Hence the six-o-clock start while the morning is fresh and cool and -- sixty-something bicyclist knees not being up to rock hard cement -- I use an old pillow as a hassock. Nor do I tackle the entire sala in one go. Four or five mornings it takes, the cement handily marked out in squares to mimic tiles, easy-peasy to divide the room into daily chunks.
Corners demand an old knife to ferret out the accumulated gunge and at last I've figured out the reason for that dark-colored painted strip which circumnavigates the room like an imitation skirting board. It hides polish smudges.
Hard work and, like any simple repetitive labor, also therapeutic. The mind tends to stop its uproar and drifts off into more peaceful side alleys; mulling over a piece like this, contemplating plans for the garden, what to cook up for dinner. Two birds with one stone -- a polished floor and a moment or two of mental quiet.
Phase two of Oplan Starwax is the stork imitation. As the years pile up the ability to one-leggedly whoosh-whoosh a coconut husk about the floor with any dexterity and not fall over becomes increasingly difficult. Around the boundary of the room there's stuff to lean on (leaving red smudges; impossible to remove), handy chairs and so on, but in the center of the sala there's nothing.
Arm-windmilling generally ends with a scuffle and the coconut husk -- a tanned and tonsured cranium -- being kicked across the room and so I dug out the walking stick. Rubber-tipped. An extra leg. Rock steady. I can even whistle a happy tune as my right leg (I'm right-legged) whooshes to the front, the rear and even, in a sort of half scissors movement, to the side.
Then there's the footwear question; yea or nay? Wearing slippers is like controlling the husk with a skimboard strapped to your foot which is no control at all while a bare appendage equals a red sole and inevitably red stains where there shouldn't be.
The trials of singledom. The challenge of housework. But -- look at this; eight-o-clock with a fifth of the sala polished and an article written. Now for the palengke.
