In all honesty I have just lost a week of my life, gathering every vaguely aesthetically unpleasing object . . . which amounts to some 50% of my household goods . . . and hiding them in various cupboards, including the cavernous horror of our already piled-high attic. The toaster is now, possibly, under an old duvet with a nasty avocado-coloured polyester cover in the linen cupboard. My husband is near nervous breakdown looking for important paperwork like tax discs and their like in Lidl bags. These bags contain everything from filthy make-up containers to kiddies' crayons to family portraits in bad frames and cheap shampoo bottles . . . in other words anything that might give me away as a normal person living in a normal house as opposed to a glamorous domestic goddess living a life of rarefied perfection.

"Why do you keep arranging to do all these things?" pleaded my frazzled mother as she watched her eldest child sob her way through cleaning out an anciently encrusted cutlery drawer just in case there was some test I had to pass beforehand. "They are not going to send somebody around to check your cupboards, " said my sister. "Surely not, " my mother said but the two of them exchanged glances that said, supposing they do? What will she do then?

"I do it because it's fun!" I said and they both looked at me like, "Yeah, right." They didn't say it out loud because they could see I had crossed over to the other side. Into the place I went as a bridezilla and a first-time expectant mother; the land that sense forgot.

The thing is I love my house, and I have interesting bits and bobs and it's nice to celebrate them by having pretty photographs taken and sharing all my hard work. That should be enough. Deep down I knew I didn't have to put my life on hold and my child into care so that I could rearrange curtains and commission coordinating throw cushions, and rearrange the books by my bed so that it looks like I read Balzac and Banville . . . but I did. Because while I pretend it doesn't matter, I care what other people think of me. I want people to think I have a nice house and a great life. It's not enough to just have a nice house and a great life . . . where's the fun in that? It's pure vanity but believe me, one week of high-end neurotic cleaning is punishment in itself. In the end the Image Interiors team came and they were lovely people.

I needn't have worried, but worry I did.

Passionately. Olympically.

When they were gone and I realised that I had expended mountains of far more valuable energy than I needed to have done, I collapsed in front of the telly. On the news I saw that a man had just been sentenced to four years for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.

And my bedroom curtains aren't properly pleated? Isn't the world a funny place?