My goodness, we're a dirty bunch. According to a survey which hit my desk in the past few days, a third of us spend just two hours a week cleaning their homes. They ought to come round my place is all I can say.

Don't get me wrong. Our house is anything but uncluttered. Even though, technically, there's just the two of us now, we live in a morass of muddle. Much of this I put down to my wife, who has a secret addiction to books.

She cannot pass a Waterstones, for example, without rushing in and snapping up three at a time, thanks to their ceaseless special offers on published works. A book at bedtime? No problem, just pick one up off the floor.

This wouldn't be such an issue if we didn't live in a relatively confined period-piece space. But together (and I admit to being as big a culprit in all this as she is) we both share the mutual habit of not being able to dispose of anything which can be described as a family memento.

So this ranges, currently, from various works of art by eldest grandson, usually of Daleks, to silk ribbons which were once attached to anniversary bouquets (these are entwined neatly around central heating pipes in the kitchen) and onwards to many and various knick-knacks, including the toys you get in Kinder eggs.

So, picture the scene; a grossly over-filled house on any given Saturday morning and a lie-in after the rigours of confronting commuter traffic head-on for a week is never an option. Oh, no. Come dawn, it's a case of rise and shine.

My wife, who has sprung into cleansing action like a whirling dervish, possesses this appalling instinct to clean on the first day of the weekend.

This is not just a cursory wave of the duster, either. No, this is a full-blown top to bottom affair.

This is no one-woman show, by the way. The plugging in and switching on of the vacuum cleaner at the foot of the bed in which you are trying to gently doze is a clear indicator of what is expected. There is nowhere to run or hide. You have to vacate the comfort of the duvet and get cleaning. Behaving like Mr Grumpy doesn't do any good, either. It just means you don't communicate much for the rest of the day. Usually, for the sake of keeping the peace, I opt to do the bathroom, while, down below, my nearest and dearest is cleaning the kitchen.

I have to say that I find all this really takes the edge of one's weekend, though I acknowledge that it has to be done to avoid descending into a permanent state of domestic squalor.

I wish, though, that in years gone by I had trained my children better. My mother had a wonderful wheeze which I never acknowledged until I was well into adulthood when I realised I had been conned. As a child she used to sit me on the bottom of the stairs, hand me a duster and some special "magic polish", whereupon I would proceed to buff up the banisters and all the woodwork for her, thinking it was a special game between the two of us. She, no doubt, put her feet up in the living room with a cup of tea and a digestive. I've missed a trick there.

Anyway, must go, I have the bedrooms to do. Though, I have already yelled downstairs about the fact I almost went head over heels, tripping on a Charles Dickens tome.

"Was it Oliver Twist My Ankle?" came the churlish response from the floor below.