A burning question: how to clean your lovely mahjong set? Listen to the wise advice of Martin Rep.  ' If you don’t like it, though, just ask your grandchild to do it for you - she will love it.'

An Apple keyboard can be put in the dishwasher - just take care not to set the temperature too high - and after that you will be able to write stories like never before, instead of having to fffffight with characters which will repeat themselves endlessly.

At least, that’s what they advise on many spots on the Internet. Personally, I would never try it, unless I would already have the intention of finally buying that shiny new aluminum Bluetooth keyboard I have been dreaming of so long.

But now I am talking about cleaning mahjong tiles. So I don’t put them in the dish washer which ruined half of my expensive wineglasses. And yet, them tiles have to be washed up every now and then. You know how many men never wash their hands after going to the boy’s room? Neither do I, but just spend fifteen minutes next to the towels and you know that at least half of them leave the bathroom without even looking at the water tap. People take their lunches at the mahjong tables, they clean their noses, they - well, they do all kind of awful things, and they do that during gameplay.

This time, I especially needed to clean them since we sold all our twenty sets to Daja Mahjong Shop now that we have stopped organizing the Golden Dragon Tournament. And you want the sets delivered spic and span, so the next user will have a happy time with it.

Mahjong sets are like little babies. You love them since they have given you so much joy. So you wash them gently in lukewarm water, in the kitchen sink. (When I cleaned my first set, a bone/bamboo one, I followed Tom Slopers advice to rub them gently with alcohol. I had to stop that since the paint vanished rapidly. Luckily, I had the alcohol to get over the shock.

Cleaning those beautiful OEMC 2005 plastic tiles is not that hard. It’s mainly boring. Mankind did not invent dish washers for nothing!

So the tiles get in the kitchen sink. Add two or three drips of dishwashing liquid. Let them swim around for a couple of minutes. Listen to that bubblin’ sound they make when you let your hands go through them: like sparrows under water.

Now, you take the whole lot of them and put them in a colander. Let some fresh water run over it to remove the remainder of the detergent. Now comes the boring part.

You put them all on a towel, face-down, and not touching each other (otherwise the parts where they touch, will remain moist and you will have stains). Take care not to fall asleep. And take care you don’t mix the tiles with the set you washed ten minutes ago and which is drying next to this one. You will have much extra work sorting them out!

Now it is time to walk the dog or write that column for Mahjong News. And then, when you’re done, the nice work starts: you put them all back in the box, bot nicely sorted. The only way you really can be sure that each set is complete. And this is a comforting little job.  If you don’t like it, though, just ask your grandchild to do it for you - she will love it.

Just take care to clean her before she starts. Otherwise, you will end up with a set with traces of peanut butter.