Step into Christmas

I came home from work expecting to see everything looking pretty pristine, clean and tidy. You see, today was cleaning day. In actual fact, Tuesday is normally the day my cleaner comes around - not too far after the weekend for a bit of washing to pile up, is my view. Only Monday morning she called just as I was about to depart to see whether she could pop in today. She's very efficient and does a mean job with the duster and iron. But when you get her on the phone, she doesn't half drone on a bit.

Maybe patience isn't one of my finest qualities at times but today the moment I saw her name pop up on the mobile, I knew the conversation was going to go on about 50% longer than it needed to. I say 'than it needed to' because I could see the floor numbers above the lift door slowly tick up outside my apartment - 10, 11, 12.... And I knew that my polite British reserve wasn't going to cut her off in mid flight. There was me hoping that either she'd suddenly stop or that the lift would take its time. Neither were having anything of it. As I politely tried to talk over her in the descending lift that she was likely to get cut off, she got cut off.

Anyway, back to my original theme. So I got back from work expecting to see everything looking pretty prestine, clean and tidy, and indeed it was. But there was also a neatly wrapped Christmas present waiting for me. As I placed my new gift under my mini yukka next to all of my other presents, I did start to think about the idea giving. I wouldn't have thought that my cleaner had a lot of spare cash to throw around willy nilly but somehow I had made it onto the radar. Had I planned to give her a gift? Maybe, sort of; no, not really.... It just hadn't really occurred to me. And I guess I hadn't really given her much credit for being a someone that's more than just a person that scrubs the inside of my bath or picks up odd socks from the floor or talks a lot on the phone. Is she a wife, a mother, a sibling? Does she like cats? Not a clue. I hadn't given it much thought - which is a bit of a shock, really, given that she knows what the colour is of my favourite underpants (purple). I think it's time to make a bit more of an effort.