Let me say first that I never expected to become one of the class of women who employ cleaners. I disapproved of employing another woman to do my nasty work on both feminist and socialist grounds. It made me one of the oppressors I felt. Then I had a stroke. And I reckoned that this justified me in getting a cleaner. In fact I got one with a suspicious promptness. I also felt it justified my retiring from 'teaching' creative writing. In fact the stroke was dead handy in lots of ways, I would never have got my book published without it. I hadn't even realised just how bored I was with running groups, I had done it for far too long and though we did many projects to gee the lessons up - including at trip to Barcelona for one group - I had drained the juice out of my initial enthusiasm. To be honest it was a cushy little number that was a nice excuse not to write.
My first cleaner was wonderful, a tall attractive young Polish woman who was as capable of sorting out my computer as my cupboards, she made me realise that not everyone hates cleaning in the way that I do - but then I am not very good at it, Ola was admirable at cleaning, loved my dog - who loved her back - and she talked to her in Polish that she understood at least as well as English (ie not at all) Ola was off back to Warsaw to do Environmental studies in the autumn, meanwhile we would smoke fags together and weep over the Warsaw uprising on the net. I can't remember what bit of papal doctrine it was that induced me to say that I thought the Polish pope was a particularly fascistic creep, I expect it was him saying that AIDS was increased with the use of condoms. Anyway that was the end of a beautiful friendship.
I can be very tactless. I sometimes hear myself blurting some idiocy and I wonder why but it is always after the event. I have sometimes heard that age brings wisdom, not to me it hasn't and I have a brother in law of ninety two who regularly remonstrates & chastises me on matters of my political slackness re Gaza and the West Bank - he has learned nothing about tact - his stroppiness is intact - thank god or Marx.
My friend has a truly marvellous cleaner from the Ukraine who goes through the flat like a Soviet tank on a kind of scorched earth policy, she doesn't,of course, burn but she makes neat to such an extent that we can find nothing for days. I stuff all my paperwork in my computer case for safety but have lost books for months, outrageously in the bookcase. Post operations the place gleams and shines with cleanliness smells of cleaning agents and virtue, it take days to get it back to being rightly messy again. I fumble around if I am there at the same time as her and watch as she moves effectively from one job to the next, in a past life she was a mining engineer now she is poetry in motion.
I rationalise it now, being an employer, and console myself with the fact that the cleaner needs the money and does the work thoroughly in a quarter of the time it would take me to make a muck of it. Still feel queasy though and I have no intention of sharing this with my brother-in-law.
- Gabby
- Southampton/Greenwich, United Kingdom
- Loud woman is just one of the manifestations of Gabby/Mo Foster.She is the one at the bus stop complaining when the rest of us don't dare, or care. She is the one in the pub who laughs at men, buys her own drink and refuses to be intimidated.She claims and inhabits her own space ( and sometimes your space too) she is lairy opinionated and insists on beng heard. She often talks sense. Loud woamn is inappropriate and entirely appropriate She marches for her rights and your rights even when you don't know you want them She is nuisance and joy Her mouth is her weapon. Mo always tries to remember that she is a Loud woman. She is also a published novelist and her second novel is due to emerge this year. She has had short plays produced professionally and poetry published. She sometimes reads her menopausal punk poetry in public.
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