It’s marvellous having
help around home and garden. My cleaning lady is a delight. She is young, well
half my age, half-Italian, very attractive, jolly personality, and extremely helpful in many ways. I would be
lost without her. Particularly when the castors fall off my bed, two to be
exact. Two castors, I mean, not two beds... although it is a double-bedded
room. One for him and one for me, except he has no trouble with his castors. Hmm
perhaps I sleep funny!
The casters aren't
the normal push-in variety, they have to be screwed - which is a problem when
the threads break. Family members tried to fix it, but couldn’t. Apparently
I either needed new castors or a new bed. I wouldn’t mind but the old one is
only about three years old. I have such rotten luck with castors.
So the bed was left
in an unfixable state and that night I slept in a lopsided position and
vowed to replace the bed with a new one ... or at least new castors.
Next day I asked my
wonder-woman not to move the bed, explaining that if she did we’d never get it
back in position. At that, I left her to get on with cleaning that room. However,
she did seem to be taking rather a long time. It’s only a small room, you see.
I went to investigate and found her kneeling by the side of an upturned single
bed, all the linen and mattress on the other bed (the one with good castors)
and the bedstead on its side. There’s no messing with my cleaning lady, when
she does a job she does it well.
‘The thread’s
broken,’ she announced, ‘I’ll have to pack it.’
See, I told you she
was good.
On hearing this I
got down on my knees to help. Of course, I couldn’t do much, so I spent the
next fifteen minutes or so playing the part of errand girl. She wanted cardboard,
she said. I must have looked dumbstruck because she went on to explain that she
needed it to pack the hole before screwing in the castor. I fetched the cardboard.
Next she wanted super glue, which I happened to have. I fetched that. Then I had to supply her with a screwdriver
with which to pack the cardboard in the hole, and scissors to cut the card. Kitchen
paper was also required to catch the drips of super glue (there weren’t any, as
it happened) and then she thanked me for my help. SHE thanked ME? And there was
me forever in the girl’s debt.
The family menfolk
couldn’t get over it ... beaten by a
woman was one remark. Well yes, and had I been forty years younger that
woman would have been me.
Well, that was a
couple of weeks ago and the castors are still holding, but I won’t shout too
loud – just in case.
Next post will be about
the Gardener!
