FOR a brief spell, around 2014, I tried in vain to reclaim the word "slut".

Not the perverted, twisted Americanisation of the word, not the version used to penalise women for taking pleasure in their own bodies. There was a global movement trying to do that, the SlutWalks

No, the purest, original sense of the word - an untidy, slovenly woman. This is the word the columnist Katherine Whitehorn used in a seminal 1963 column to defend women who "change their stockings in taxis" or have "cups in the study and boots in the kitchen".

We, women, have simply never been able to claw back the word from those who wish to use it as a stick to beat us with, a label to ostracise us with.

You can't really go about declaring yourself a slut without a lot of contextualising.

But I have always been an untidy, slovenly woman. I was never a slovenly, untidy girl but, at some point, all standards slipped and here I am, sitting in an anti-paradise, a domestic hell of my own creation. Dishes are not done, the laundry mounts up, I can't have visitors around because I'm too embarrassed to let them in. Even if I did let them in, there's nowhere to sit as the chairs, I find, are useful receptacles for everything from clothing to books to unpacked Christmas presents to the mail.

Dishes, in particular, are a problem.

The dishes give me an existential crisis. Unless I start using paper plates and disposable cutlery, or give up food, this is it, for the rest of my life, day in and day out, washing crockery.

The dishes are a routine symbol of time's endless march, and I cannot bear it. "That's just clatty," my friend Janet says, looking at the kitchen sink.

I imagine there's truth to both of our positions.

In lockdown the situation has worsened. Pre-pandemic I would at least fret about the state of the place in case someone popped round. Yet we were then banned from having company and all my guilty secrets became guaranteed to be kept between the four walls and me.

Last Christmas I was forced in to a panic of tidying because I was having new floors laid and the whole flat painted - after living here for 10 years - so everything had to be packed up. Some 14 months later and I still haven't unpacked. The boxes are now a permanent fixture in each room and whatever might be in them I now do without.

I came home from cat sitting over Christmas on January 4 and never unpacked my suitcase. I sat it on my bed to try to force myself to deal with it but instead spent months tucked up beside it, which hardly mattered as I've largely become nocturnal during lockdown, staying up most of the night and napping on the sofa when needed.

I was off on holiday last week to a cold climate similar to a Scottish winter so just... zipped the suitcase back up again, and off I went.

I've been feeling increasingly shamefaced about all this since socialising became an option again. What if, horror, someone pops round? They would have concerns, and rightly so.

I gave my neighbour a lift on Saturday and he came in to wait while I put my coat on and organised my bag. It was only having a fresh pair of eyes in the place that made me appreciate what a chaotic vibe I'm giving out.

Things have to change around here. Except... this morning I read a piece in a respectable newspaper that gives my uncouth lifestyle habit a name. Goblin mode.

Attractive, I know. Apparently during the initial phases of lockdown people cleaved to "cottagecore" - making sourdough bread and learning to darn, sew and knit. They carried out home improvements and became the sort of citizens of whom Kirsty Allsopp would be proud.

Then, the pivot. Some of us gave up. We started going to Zoom calls in our pyjamas and eating straight from the fridge with our hands. We didn't bother to dress to go outside and we were blowed if we were doing online exercise classes.

One person quoted on their life in goblin mode says they enjoy the mischief and feeling like they might "jump on the back of a salamander and make trouble". I don't think I'd fit on the back of a salamander, given all this lockdown weight gain, but I do appreciate the notion of mischief.

One slight problem with adopting goblin mode is that the rules fail me. "Inherent to the phrase," says the writer, "Is the idea that it can be switched on and off."

It's been enjoyable, sliding in to a sort of feral lifestyle where the rules of organisation and cleanliness don't apply, but I might be done now. Like blended working, a mix of human and goblin living seems ideal.

If someone could source the off-switch for me I'd be very grateful. It's time for this goblin to emerge into the light.