Parent management tips

[whatho]

When your father's visiting and he's just taken your bike to the bike shop to have new tyres fitted and offered to chip in something for the cost of that and yesterday he bought you hardy perennials for the garden and he lets you live in the house rent-free, you can't say 'Please don't wear your shoes into the living room because you're tracking a certain amount of poo and foliage onto the carpet and it takes me some considerable time to clean it and I'm working to several deadlines at once and I already lost most of the morning to pulling up the bindweed and I think I'm allergic to dust'. But you can get down on your hands and knees and scrub the entire room with a brush and then move all the furniture and vacuum thoroughly and then hobble around making noises about your back and coughing a lot, and it has pretty much the same effect. He seems to have found some slippers.