Egyptian murals and flat-pack furniture

As a child I fell in love with Egyptian history. As I recall, the obsession had already started by the time I read Mika Waltari's "Sinuhe egyptiläinen" at age twelve, but it was certainly fuelled by the book (to date the most translated ("The Egyptian") and internationally best-known Finnish novel, on the subject of – what else – historical Egypt. There is also a film version, starring Peter Ustinov, but never mind that, it's terrible by comparison). I read encyclopedias on Egyptian history, was an expert on various pharaohs and kingdoms, and was dying, dying to go and see the pyramids and the tombs for myself. Only when I grew a little older, a tv documentary more or less ruined that desire for me. The murals in the tombs, thousands of years old, were being destroyed rapidly by – you probably know this already – the condensation caused by the sweat and breath of tourists. Fat, white, Western tourists gawping, huffing and puffing, and sweating away. Eww. I can never go and add my sweat to the destruction of the heritage of our species...

This fact – that humans sweat and breathe out moisture – has become relevant to our daily lives in an unexpected (and unpleasant!) way. The black computer desk we bought for the elder boy's bedroom, of a trusty flat-pack Wal-Mart range of furniture, develops a coating of fluffy green mold, particularly but not only on the underside, in a matter of two weeks. I wipe, I clean, I scrub, I use bleachy mediums I am not normally fond of, being an environmentally-friendly "crank", to no avail. It is no more than two weeks since I gave the damn thing a proper seeing-to, and the sneaky bugger is covered in mold again. On the underside, which I have to actually check to notice, rather than at the very least having the decency to grow moldy on the work surface, where it'd be simpler to spot and wipe. Sure, everything grows moldy in this climate – remember, there was evidence of contact-lense-induced keratitis, a fungal infection of the eye, particularly in the tropics – but it is the speed at which this particular unhappy item does it. I cannot keep up. I have narrowed the reasons down to the size of his room and the colour of the desk (younger brother's mock-wood desk, of the very same make and in a larger room, has only grown moldy during the torrential month of March, when everything else in the house including picture frames, lids of toothpaste tubes, t-shirts forgotten on a bedroom surface for a day, etc. went green and fluffy too). It is driving me crazy, particularly as I am a whole lot more fond of spending my time spodding in front of the Mac, or reading a book, or pottering around in the garden, or indeed of watching paint dry and grass grow than I am of housework.

We are going home for the summer, in a week! It is time I got cranky due to travel nerves. I detest flying, not a good thing when one lives on a rock in the biggest ocean on the planet, and comes from about as far from it as is possible. I expect the fucking table to have grown a rainforest of moss and mold by the time we are back in late July.

© 2006 Anna MR