IT was while I was cleaning the fish bowl that the goldfish's eye fell out. I pushed it back in, replaced the fish, Marlon, in the clean water . . . and

seconds later the eye floated to the surface. "This calls for a spot of superglue," I thought.

Now before anyone calls the RSPCA, I'd better explain that the goldfish is

one of the plastic variety that you buy with its own battery-operated fish bowl.

Switch the battery on and the bowl gently vibrates so the fish move around, their plastic fins tap-tapping against the glass.

They're about as lifelike as those wretched nodding dogs you used to see in the rear windows of cars, the sort of cars that were also covered in stickers carrying messages for other drivers such as "Honk If You Bonk" - or perhaps it was the other way round.

But back to my fishy friend, Marlon. Unfortunately his eye refused to stick back in its socket and he became yet another casualty of what I shall call The Great Friday Clean-Up.

I have discovered, you see, that when you have a mental blockage - when the words refuse to flow - nothing relieves it so much as clearing your household blockages.

I think it was Joan Crawford (if you're under 25 ask your parents for details) who swore that there was nothing to beat a spot of domestic work, like scrubbing the kitchen floor, to get her creative juices going - when she wasn't,

according to her daughter's biography, thrashing her offspring with metal coathangers, that is.

So on Friday, after fretting and fuming in front of a blank PC screen, I decided to try this diversion. I baulked at cleaning the kitchen floor - that will be a major project, probably in the spring - but a bit of tidying, wiping and dusting sounded quite entertaining.

First I tackled an immense stack of magazines in the living room that have been waiting to be read since last Christmas. I tried to move them and something horrid scuttled out from behind the pile. I grabbed a handful of publications to thwack it into oblivion (no, I'm not a Buddhist, how did you guess?) and the entire pile groaned, then collapsed on to my feet - and presumably on to the scuttling thing as I didn't see it again.

Cross and sore, I let the magazines lie scattered all over the floor while I limped to my bookshelves and gave them a flip with my duster. An ornament, three singing kittens wearing little frocks - a present from a long-dead relative who was a great favourite of The Mother - fell to the ground, one of the heads catching on a shelf and breaking off.

Thinking to hide it later (she'd never notice its absence would she?), I left it there, went upstairs and brought down some old clothes I'd been meaning to sort and mend for months.

Then I spotted the murky waters of the fish bowl. I threw the clothes on to the floor with the magazines and an upturned wastepaper bin and took my pets into the kitchen.

It was then that The Mother arrived. "What," she demanded, "is going on here? What a mess! And oh no, Auntie Betty's kittens are broken."

I had to think quickly and suddenly discovered that my creative juices were restored and flowing again - just like Joan Crawford said they would be.

"Help!" I squeaked, "I think I've been burgled . . ."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.