I just can't believe I'm having this conversation, I thought. 'I can't believe I'm sitting here on the stairs on a Sunday morning having a conversation about how to fold towels.' But I was, because this was Mother's Day and I was in the middle of the happy Mother's Day calls from my children. My son got in first, which he usually does, because both daughters were recovering from having had their breakfast cooked by their own children, several of whom haven't quite mastered the timing of a full English. Anyway, having thanked my son for the parmesan knife – which may sound an odd present but I like it, he's very good at sorting out gifts which he knows I'd appreciate – I got a call from the elder daughter. Somewhere along the line after the Mother's Day greetings and thank yous, we got to the towels and I've just remembered how it started. She'd been out the previous day to buy boxes. To put things in. 'What things,' I asked. 'Anything,' she said airily. 'It's the new way to keep a tidy house.' 'Says who?' I asked. 'Anthea,' she said. And my heart sank. Because I knew immediately what she meant. A few weeks ago I stayed with my friend who told me she had two new obsessions. Anthea and Lidl. It sounded to me like some old music hall act. Like Wilson, Kepple and Betty who used to do an hilarious Egyptian dance. Not that I've ever seen them live, only on film – I'm not that old – but you might expect Anthea and Lidl to do something similar. But no, Anthea wasn't some music hall magician's muse, she was Anthea Turner who has a programme on the television telling other people how to keep their house tidy. Patronising cow you might say, or I might, but no, Anthea obviously has her following and I was in the home of one of them. Over the weekend I grew steadily less fond of Anthea, even if I had ever been fond of someone who's youngish, blonde and thin, what with the boxes and the towel folding and the way she keeps her knick knacks in different little compartments. It became apparent that anyone married to Anthea was never going to go out with odd socks or a wrinkled pair of boxers. I somehow managed to survive the weekend without having anything of mine boxed, although I suspect eyes had been cast over my jumbled suitcase. Oh yes, and Lidl. My friend has discovered this store in a big way. It's fairly new where she lives and she obviously spends a great deal of time in it. Almost everything new I picked up in the house had come from there. Including lots of boxes a la Anthea. It's not that I've got anything against Lidl, it's a fascinating shop. Where else would you be able to buy a set of spanners right next to packs of giant German sausages and boxes of knock-down price pansies? I hadn't intended to buy anything, however, until we went to the supermarket which just happened to be right next door to Lidl and, before I knew it, I had been manoeuvred into the store and was loading my trolley with a mini-greenhouse, a pair of garden shears, eight packets of seeds, a cane wastepaper basket, some interesting looking German sausages and a tin of Italian coffee. I only left the collapsible trellis because I couldn't fit it into the car. I was beginning to see how one could become obsessed with Lidl, at least until you ran out of cupboard and floor space. Now, on Mother's Day morning, I was getting a touch of the deja vus as I realised that my daughter was also obsessing about Anthea and her blasted boxes. And come to think of it she's also very fond of Lidl, and living in Lidl's home country, she has five big stores within easy driving distance. She'd just told me about the boxes, which she'd bought at Lidl, of course, when I sussed what she was talking about. 'It's that bloody woman, isn't it?' I said. 'Anthea whatever, the one on the television who tells people how to keep their home tidy.' There was, she said, nothing wrong with Anthea. I had, I said, just had a weekend with Sally who was another Anthea fan, and she'd been going on about towel folding. 'Ah, the towel folding,' said my daughter dreamily. 'You should see Anthea's towel folding.' What, I wanted to know, did this woman know about folding a towel that I didn't. Surely you just got hold of two ends and put them together and repeated it until the towel was, well, folded. Apparently not. Anthea folds them all into the same size, after they've been ironed of course. 'Ironed,' I shrieked. 'Who irons towels? No, don't tell me, she does. You'll tell me next she irons tea towels, and dish cloths. No, don't tell me.' My daughter – and Sally before her – explained that it was all about space saving, neatness and being able to find things. I said still didn't see how Anthea towel folding was any different from mine. 'You don't fold yours,' said my daughter bluntly. The cheek of it. Of course I do, I said. Well, all right, sometimes if I'm in a hurry and I've grabbed and bundle of towels off the line I shove them into the airing cupboard quickly. And yes, it is annoying to pull out a towel and have the entire contents of the airing cupboard – usually including at least one cat – fall on you. And yes, I can see that a neatly folded airing cupboard, except that Anthea probably says linen closet, might be nice but not all of us have time to salivate over our linen. 'Anthea says that her method is time-saving because you never have to spend time looking for things,' she said. 'Well bully for Anthea,' I said nastily. I was beginning to think Anthea was well on her way to sainthood or at the very least getting a Nobel prize for household neatness. Anthea is all for boxes and labelling, she likes drawer dividers and I'm now having to look out for a special sort for my daughter which looks like a concertina and which she can't get abroad. Anthea, I was also told, collects all her pens together in separate colours and puts elastic bands round them. Anthea's very big on elastic bands. All this not only makes for tidiness, it makes rooms look bigger. Send in Anthea and my sitting room would soon look like the Albert Hall, if you can believe my daughter. And Sally. Actually, both their houses are always immaculate anyway. When Sally says she's going to do the spring cleaning she doesn't mean she's going to clean things which were last cleaned last spring. Both have store cupboards which are height and colour co-ordinated. Not piled high with big tins on top of tiny tins so that they fall off and bruise your toes and teach your grandson yet another word he's couldn't possibly repeat at school. Everything is neat, packed into cartons, plastic containers and boxes and the tin that says tea really has got tea in it, not 16 plasters and a half empty bottle of aspirin. They're in the first aid kit box which actually has first aid things in it and doesn't only contain an elastic knee bandage and a corn plaster. Anthea would be proud of them. In fact, they're both Anthea graduates without having ever met her. As for Lidl, I hope that Anthea never goes near it. The charm of it is that it isn't Anthea tidy at all. Give her an hour or so in there and she'd have the bratwurst lined up in straight rows, the frankfurters standing to attention, the garden gnomes strictly away from the jars of Euro jam – colour co- ordinated Euro jam, of course, no gooseberry next to the the raspberry – and you certainly wouldn't trip over the garden tools while reaching for a pack of chocolate muffins. Keep her away, please. PS: I told my son about the Anthea conversation and it turned out that not only did he watch the programme but was highly enthusiastic about the towel folding. Help, I'm surrounded. It's becoming a cult. PPS: A sign of the times? I spotted graffiti on a little bus shelter on the way to Saltash the other day. It read 'climate change'. In my day when people did graffiti on bus shelters they used to write naughty words. What's the world coming to?
