Strange scrabbling noises at the front of the house this morning prompted me to stick my head out of the bedroom window.

A young man with a purposeful expression was climbing up a ladder.

Now a purposeful young man on a ladder may sound promising but I hadn’t ordered one and as he was clutching a bucket and a squeegee, there was no mistaking his intention.  Some tactful questioning revealed that he was, as I suspected, a window cleaner at the wrong house.
‘Uhh, I had a few beers last night, don’t really know what I’m doing this morning,’ he said,  switching his direction to reverse and dropping his squeegee on his descent.

I said, ‘Wait, wait, don’t go away!” and moments later opened the front door where he stood bleary-eyed in the rain. I poked through the shrapnel in my purse, and asked ‘how much to do my windows, matey?  £4.   A bargain.
‘Do them,’ I urged.

I’ve never had my windows cleaned before.  No need really, it rains most days.  And with so much chocolate in Lidl, just round the corner, I can usually find a much more fruitful exchange for £4.

But sparkling windows – how exciting!  How posh. They’d go with the new carpets.

Ten minutes later he’d collected his £4 and I was inspecting the windows.

They were still mucky.

Then I remembered glass was a two way viewing medium. The muck was on the inside. I ran to the door to call him back but he was half way up the street, bucket clanking, trundling unsteadily through the rain towards the next mucky-windowed, wrong house.

Never mind, it won’t be long before my new carpets gather muck, then they’ll match the windows.