Steve Canavan: Memo to self... don’t fret so much about the cutlery

Mrs Canavan and I had row the other night, about washing up.

It isn’t one of Mrs Canavan’s strong points. In fact I’d go so far as to say Mrs Canavan is to washing up what Adolf Hitler was to world peace.

She grew up in a house where there was a dishwasher (I mean a machine, not a servant doing the dishes – her family doesn’t have colonial connections) and as a result didn’t do the things that most other children did, that is roll your sleeves up, stick your hand in those frothy Fairly Liquid bubbles and start scrubbing.

It means as an adult she possesses absolutely no washing up skill whatsoever.

Most of us know the generally agreed correct way to wash up is to place all the cutlery in the water first (so it rinses as you wash other stuff), then to wash any glasses, next move on to the other stuff (aside from anything really greasy or heavily stained, which of course must be left till last lest we dirty the water too much), before finally doing the cutlery.

Voila, job done, lovely gleaming pots.

Mrs Canavan’s method, however, is very different.

Firstly she will not put all the cutlery in because, and I quote, ‘it feels funny when my fingers touch them’. I have no idea what she means by this but she clearly requires counselling.

She then begins her idea of washing up, which is to dangle, say, a plate in the water for a couple of seconds and then place it in the draining board.

She doesn’t actually touch it with a cloth or a brush - she somehow seems to think the power of the water and the washing up liquid alone will magically rid crockery of even the toughest stains. It doesn’t of course, so the end result is that what she places on the draining board is pretty much identical to how it was before she put it in the water, just a bit wetter. This means if a plate was stained with baked bean juice before it was ‘washed’ by Mrs Canavan, it still has bean juice stains on after.

However, this doesn’t see to bother Mrs C, who I can only assume has an eyesight condition, for she nonchalantly throws the still dirty plates and pans on the draining board before moving on to the next item and failing to wash that properly too.

I exaggerate not when I say I have to re-wash around 85 per cent of everything Mrs Canavan has done and have, on more than one occasion during our lengthy partnership, wanted to ram the washing up brush somewhere where it shouldn’t be rammed.

However, our row wasn’t about that – after 13 years together I’ve got used to the fact she is hopeless at washing up (it’s kind of endearing) – it was about what she did with the cutlery.

You see – and you’re about to get a real insight into how pathetic a human being I am - when I’ve washed a knife or fork or spoon I place it in the cutlery holder so the handle touches the plastic bit at the bottom and the top of the cutlery – the bit we eat from – is protruding upwards and not touching anything. In my mind this means the important end – the part that goes in your mouth – doesn’t come into contact with any potential germs that may be in the cutlery holder section of the draining board.

Yes, I really am that sad.

I have told Mrs Canavan this about 756 times – who says marriage grows stale and less exciting after you’ve been together a while? – and yet she still manages to consistently get it wrong.

The other night I wandered into the kitchen where a small miracle had occurred and Mrs Canavan had actually washed some pots. Then I noticed all the cutlery was pointing the wrong way.

It had been a long day and admittedly I perhaps wasn’t in the best of moods.

“You’ve done it again,” I said letting out a long sigh.

‘What?’ she said, slightly puzzled.

“You’ve put the cutlery in the wrong way round. How many times have I told you it goes the other way around?” I said in exasperated fashion.

‘Well why do I have to put them in that way just because you think it’s the right way to put them? Why can’t they go the other way round?’ she said.

“Because I’ve told you,” I said a little too loudly, and is if I were some kind of cutlery law-maker, “if you do it the way you’ve done it then the mouth end of the fork is at the bottom of the cutlery holder.”

There was a silence in which two things occurred: firstly I realised my life had reached a new low in that I was genuinely annoyed about which way up cutlery goes in a draining board, and secondly Mrs Canavan realised she made a huge error by saying she said the words ‘I do’ a few years back when we were younger, still had dreams, and – crucially – didn’t have two small children and got eight hours sleep a night as opposed to four.

I muttered a grumpy ‘fine, it doesn’t matter anyway’ and marched off, slightly embarrassed at my over-reaction but – because I’m a man – unwilling to apologise or admit I was in the wrong.

They say you get a little grumpier and finnicky the older you get. I fear I may have reached that stage.

Memo to self: don’t fret so much about the cutlery, in the great scheme of things it really doesn’t matter … well, unless I get serious untreatable food poisoning off a cutlery holder infected fork and die, in which case I’ll be saying moodily in my grave, ‘I told you so’.