It's been a peaceful day so far. I was intending to work this morning, pending my condition as I've contracted a cold from having recently been in airplanes, the virus and bacteria infested airborne flea-busses that they are. I also happened to ever so slightly over-indulge in fine Belgian beers last night, naturally the thought of sleeping till whichever undecided hour was far more appealing than dragging my congested lungs and sinuses onto a train and into the far off, dank and post-Friday-night-urine-soaked recesses of zone 3 for a few pounds sterling more.

So I did just that, I woke up at half past whenever, met Phil somewhere between the lounge and the kitchen and without a spoken word decided that the usual would be a good idea, brunch, frothy coffee and the newspapers. No need to even mention it; de facto Saturday constitutional.

The house has been toying with the idea of employing the services of a cleaner. It's not that we don't clean, well, the Learmont's do, we love it, we derive a great sense of sanity and satisfaction from it and it restores mental and domestic order. But why not get someone in for a couple of hours a week to do some deep cleaning that we can easily maintain, avoiding any resentment that might be incurred on account of all parties not participating in the practice of disinfecting in equal measure and with equal zest.

In the kitchen at work one day I mentioned that I was considering hiring a cleaner when one of my colleagues told me of someone she knew, a friend of hers was a cleaner and in dire need of more work. Now before I go any further let me deliver a little slanderous history on colleagues. When I first joined the corporation I was sent on a number of training courses to gain some supposedly deeper knowledge on the products I would be working on and supporting. I met two new colleagues there as well external delegates who has been placed on the same training course. There has been a particularly interesting documentary on TV the night before called The Power of Fear. It centered mainly on Al Qaeda not actually being, or having been, at the time of it's involvement in 9/11 a global terror organisation with the capability to mobilize itself with any devastating effect. That in fact there was no such real group called Al Qaeda who, run by the infamous bearded mountain goat that Osama Bin Laden is. That it was in fact America who invented this group on his behalf, named him as their leader and provided its virtual vastness and underground power. The mountain goat sat back picking sand and crumbs from his beard and thanked America for taking care of all the administrative red-tape involved in setting up Al Qaeda plc.

Politicians and the clergy have always used the power of fear to control society and use it as leverage for obedience and to gain our consent, under a hurricane of dizzying spin, to plan and execute whatever evils they would like in order to satisfy their own self-satisfying economic needs. In this case, we need not mention the securing of an oil pipeline in Afghanistan and the oil in Iraq, we need not mention the contracts dished out to those who flattened the place to rebuild it, using the oil as a down payment, the American administration divvying out varying proportions the oil to Bush and his oil magnate cronies. I won't go into a rant on Iraq, I'm sure, I hope that we are all in agreement here that the Bush administration is one of pure evil, their only objective is to make war, destabilize the world in order to push forward with a New Century of American Imperialism, along with the Neo Conservatives and the AEI to shove American democracy down the throats of the world, bombing them when they don’t swallow it and enjoy it. If not, please fuck off and never bother returning to my blog, you are not welcome as that would imply that you are a knucklehead Bible-bashing Bushite and in support of his destructive ways and you are contributing to the end of the world – I suggest that lock yourself away, read what’s out there, shave your wooly fleece and form and opinion, for right now, you are using up precious air that the informed amongst us desperately need to keep the Oxygen flowing to our noggins.

So, there we were sitting with our early morning coffees and Danish pastries waiting for the training to start. As I mentioned before I shot off on a tangent, to make the wait easier I got chatting to one of the external delegates about this documentary that I had seen, he too had seen it and had found it equally fascinating, fervent banter ensued. The two half-wits that I work with had not seen it and so asked for a brief explanation so that they could join in the conversation. First off, I object to this, there should never be any self-inflicted sense of social obligation to join in a conversation that is gaining momentum, it's quite acceptable to sit and keep your uninformed pie-hole closed if you don't know, don't ruin everyone else's fun by stammering along formulating knucklehead opinions on something that your being fed. Turn around, see the door? Now run, run until you can run no further, run a little more, just a little more, drop, wheeze, feel your heart flutter and splutter, feel the stabbing pain shoot up your left arm and walk undeterred and certain towards the light. I know I'm being biased, as I'm sure you can already tell that we didn't part the very best of bosom buddies.

The two colleagues deserve some kind of physical description so that I can henceforth refer to them with great unjust depravity. He is a gangly antipodean who knows nothing about everything and can’t leave a conversation between two people alone, feeling compelled to interject. He flops about like a disjointed rubber band, has little foamy bits of rabid spittle at the corners of his mouth and judging by his dress sense is a 30-something confused man trying to recapture or preserve some youth by wearing brightly colored sneakers and clothes that would have any basketball playing brother die of laughter for finally seeing a white man absolutely discredit the race. Now this might come across to some of you as hip, but this gangly insect who looks like he's about to swallow his own teeth in a fit of tetanus excitement shall here on out be known as Rabid Stick Boy.

She, well, I don't know where to start, think musty, think spinster, think split ends. She too has this crazed look in her eyes. She is a fundamentalist Christian who gets high on endorphins on Sundays and tops up on righteous radiation at her midweek get-together with her Bible-bashing Bushite kin and will remain in a state of preacher-induced hypnosis and ignorant bliss - a satisfied and I-am-going-to-heaven-and-you-are-going-to-burn-in-hell smile plastered across her face. She has been known to send spam emails to the entire company inviting us to church discos and the like. She has religious material plastered all over her partitions and is one of those who think Israel is for Christians when it is in fact property of those who believe Jesus was a rabbi and by no means the Messiah. She has a Star of David flag posted up to flutter about in the office. In retaliation I shall stick up posters of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, to whom I have recently pledged my allegiance, I have denounced the Jedi faith and become a dedicated follower and devout Disciple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as, not too long ago, I too was touched by his noodly appendage. She shall from here on out be known as Frayed Ends.

The conversation having picked up momentum, the delegate and I were on the same wavelength, discussing the conspiracy, bashing Bush with our conversational batons. We discussed the lies we've been told, the secrecy, the blatant stupidity of America and Americans, Bush, bombs, oil, deceit and death. To quote a friend, I don't know what sound chickens make coming home to roost, but all this disaster in the world, seems to be it. Rabid Stick Boy and Frayed Ends start giving their two pence worth and it's not welcome. She starts going on about how the world is actually in danger of Al Qaeda, she believes they are a real threat to the world. Now get this, she starts telling us that George W Bush has been sent here to save us all, maybe even a God-send. I couldn't listen anymore, I had to be brutal and I withdrew my sharp tongue and lashed her with it. Opinions like those need to be dealt with severely. So I did just that, I stopped her like a sledge-hammer would a rodent. From that day on, until offering the services of her friend as a cleaner, she never even looked at me, never so much as acknowledged my existence. This arrangement suited me perfectly.

The doorbell rings out, I answer it in my usual brusque manner, it's the cleaner. I wait at the door, thinking that I've made an extra effort to clean the kitchen and house, I can't have her thinking we're a slovenly bunch. She emerges at the top of the stairs, a black head cloth and big hexagonal glasses with chains hanging down the side that cover her face. I invite her in and the first thing she sees is Phil marching about in his pants. Her goggled eyes scan the floors and peer round the corners into the lounge, surveying her potential mission. I usher her towards the passage trying to get her to the kitchen so that the meeting can resume. Phil retreats to his room leaving me to do the cleaner interview thing. I offer her a cup of tea or coffee but she wants water. Her eyes all the while scanning the corners of the kitchen, the surfaces, shelves and counters. I place the glass of water down on the table, make my cup of tea and start with light banter. I discover that she’s a Palestinian/Jordanian born in South America, hence the Spanish accent. Her age is indeterminate but I’d place her in the early 40’s somewhere. I look at her bag, on the side of it is written Astra Zeneca – mission to disinfect and I wonder if I’m dealing with a cleaning nutter. The conversation quickly moves to the point, what she does, what she doesn’t do, she doesn’t iron. She’s either cleaning or she ironing she tells me, if she’s cleaning there’s no time for ironing. Fair enough I think. She starts telling me that the place needs a deep clean, that it’s going to take several sessions of deep cleaning to disinfect the place. Jesus, and there’s me thinking that we’re clean-living people. She tells me that she works in a hospital and that the place needs to be bleached. I don’t like the smell of bleach and I don’t want my kitchen counters cleaned with bleach. I let the interview roll, she’s come all the way so I might as well hear her out. I can tell that she obsessive compulsive about cleaning. I ask when she would be able to come in and it turns out that her week is actually a full week with working at a hospital and studying and that she can come in over the weekend. This simply wouldn’t do, I don’t want some nutter in a mask and extra thick rubber gloves bleaching my house while I’m trying to do brunch, read the newspaper and drink coffee. The only other time she would be able to come in is on Monday afternoons, for four hours. Four hours? How long could it possibly take to clean the communal areas, the kitchen, lounge bathroom and passage? I don’t want to be home, padding about some obsessive compulsive cleaner in full nuclear fallout battle-dress frantically disinfecting my house. She keeps telling me that she has a condition that she needs to use the shower after she’s cleaned the house. I play it straight as if this is a normal request. She rattles off a list of cleaning materials she needs, several pairs of extra thick gloves because the bacteria found in the bathroom is not the same as the bacteria found in the kitchen and so on. This woman knows her bacteria; it must be some kind of love/hate relationship. She keeps running off and looking at the cleaning materials stored in the bathroom, then under the kitchen sink, looking the broom cupboard. I would need to buy cleaning cloths and towels and she doesn’t reuse anything, everything needs to be replaced, everything is disposable, the gloves, the towels, the cloths and I’m thinking this woman is going to cost me a fortune. She even wanted to size up the vacuum cleaner to see if it was up to her standards, it’s new I tell her, sucks like a Soho hooker who’s just been paid £10.

I had a hard time getting rid of her and it was only when she complained that we wear shoes indoors and that in her culture it’s different that I raised the volume and made it known that the interview has reached a state of completion.

We all discussed the matter over dinner last night and had a good laugh, the more we looked back, the worse it all became. I’ll call tomorrow and tell her we won’t be requiring her services.