Mud

I'm fighting a battle. A losing battle.

Just about every day, or so it seems, I clean the kitchen floor. Hoover (well, to be strictly accurate Dyson) up the collected detritus, shake the mats in the utility room and then run over it with the mop to shine it up.

It doesn't last.

The dog is the worst culprit. He has short stubby legs that kick up splashes of mud from the ground in such a way that coats his rotund body before he even gets out of the gate, never mind around the field, through the woods and back. Oh, I can wipe his paws when we get in, but short of giving him a bath there is no way to remove the accumulated muck. I can shut him in the utility room for a while, but he starts wuffing and scratching at the bottom of the door until I relent and let him in, to distribute the dried on mud through the kitchen.

He's not the only one, though. The cat also leaves a trail of little muddy prints through the house, usually in a straight line to our bedroom where he snoozes the day away leaving a cat shaped outline of dirt and hairs. Master Dogwood also has a habit of playing out in the garden and then coming back looking as if he's just spent six weeks on the Somme re-enacting the first world war.

What's to be done? I really don't know, other than to keep mopping the floor like a modern day Hercules in the Augean stables.

Roll on summer.