I'D just like to say, for the record, that at 4.55pm on Sunday, September 24, 2006, I had a clean and tidy house.

Neighbours would have been welcome to pop round for a coffee. Old friends could have descended out of the blue. Even an unannounced visit from those gruesome grime detectives, Kim and Aggie, would have held no fear, because I had finally bottomed the house.

In fact, I wish I really had invited Kim and Aggie round, or at least taken photographs to remind me, because within two days it was like a bomb site once more.

The reason? The Other Half came back. He'd been on a week-long business trip, which had left me free to get to grips with the cleaning at long last.

Before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, I should point out that things are exactly the same whenever I go away. I return expecting our usual domestic chaos, to find instead the O.H. standing smugly among gleaming white goods and a carpet with visible pile. The only grubby things in sight are two slightly startled moggies, who think they've come through the wrong cat-flap by mistake and instantly begin to mount a dirty protest.

I don't know exactly why it is that the same order and harmony cannot prevail when we are both beneath the same roof together.

There are certainly things he does not like to tackle for fear that I might not like the way he does them.

Why, for example, does he think that we have a washing-up bowl? Whenever he does the dishes he hoists the bowl out and parks it on the floor, then dumps everything from china to frying-pans into the sink at the same time. And if you don't know why that's a problem, you've probably never had a domestic science lesson either.

In vain do I try to explain that breakages may be significantly reduced if one thing is washed up at once; and there's no point in trying to expound the theory about washing cleaner items first to someone who hasn't yet grasped that whites should not be stuck in the machine with brand-new bright-red T-shirts.

Still, there are things I do that he finds just as infuriating. My inability to give dishes what he considers a satisfactory rinse. The way I chuck stuff in the wash when he thinks there are a good few more wears in them yet.

Maybe our incompatible cleaning styles are holding us back. Or maybe it's that when we are together we have too much fun to be thinking about working out a cleaning rota.

We can certainly usually think of better things to do. Algebra, for instance; or wandering around Barnitts looking for sticky hooks.

I have another, darker theory; that we're both scarred emotionally by childhoods in which our parents used cleaning tools as weapons of war.

Speaking personally, I always knew there was trouble brewing when mum got out the vacuum cleaner and started bashing the hell out of the skirting boards.

I think, unfortunately, the root of the problem is probably that when we are together, our inner teenager comes to the fore. Each of us secretly thinks the other will clean up if the muck gets left around for long enough.

Maybe what we need is a real-life visit from How Clean Is Your House? God - just the threat would make me keep the house clean for ever.