Reasons Not To Be Cheerful

Our housekeeper is away with our littlest daughter, so I can live without company for a few weeks. In her place, my wife, ever the cleanly one, contracted a person of untested skills to work in our house. Oh, me. Oh my. Well, I shall start at the end, because it was the best. I went into the bathroom and looked at the shower mat. It had footprints on it. I touched them with my hand to see if it was dirt. The stains did not move. I asked the lady how the mat had gotten stained. "Oh. It mussa bin de bleech dat I did use to cleen de showa. I did step innit an step pon de mat." She pushed at the mat with her shoed foot. "Are you mad?" I yelled. You are about the do the same thing again. "Sorry. I was figettin," I thought of our fabulous Persian and Azeri rugs, that I had collected over the years, and shuddered as I imagined them with bleached marks. "She has to go, and now," I told the employment agent. "If not, then her head may be ...."

I hear that she has gone. I will not go near the house if she is still around. The rest of her time there was no shakes. I put a bag of guavas by the downstairs door, so that I would not forget them. She brouhgt them upstairs: "Whe' you wan dese?" I told her downstairs.

I have so many guavas on the trees that I feel that I will be one soon. So, amongst other things, I made juice and smoothies. No longer. "Where is the juicer?" I asked. "Juicer? Juicer?" she asked. "Yes. Juicer. It has a glass pot on top of a motor. It was by the sink." She looked glazed. "Juicer?" I told her to stop asking the question and find the juicer. She had not found it by the time that her contract was ended. Arggh!

One of my wife's colleagues, from the US South, has been regaling all who can stand it with his plaint due to come. His 'ironing maid' will be on vacation for three weeks from later this month. I should have messed him up by offering him our cleaner. I would have loved to hear his reaction if she got bleach on his poplin shirts. Better still, after she put his clothes away, she could have stood there, doe-eyed, saying "Shirts? Shirts?"