It wasn't long ago that I was a mere swab. A lowly status, I know, but compared to the shoddy job performed by my cousins, the brooms, I felt I was really something. I mean, brooms can't clean up anything unless it's dry and loose, and the world just isn't made that way. Mud, spit, spilled cola, blood, vomit . . . need I go on? Sure, you might say I was just a sponge on stick, dunked in bilge and shoved over a surface coated with other people's filth. But I was proud of what I could do: I could change things, decrust the encrusted, bring shimmer and shine to what was once putrid. The point is that I was fairly well full of myself and eventually I came to think I could clean anything, no matter how vile. I didn't realize that vilness is not the only challange for tools of my trade. I had never come up against a purposeful mess. When a group of pranksters, using hair gel, blocked off an entire wing of a building that was under my watch, I realized I had met my match.

• Pomade wall awed a mop.