B said to me a few days back that one of her friends was having to let her cleaner go. "Oh that's a shame", I murmured, only half listening.
"Which means we can have her!", continued B. Now this got my attention. Having resisted the services of a cleaner all my adult life, on the basis that cleaners constitute an unnecessary extravagance, I now found myself in another of those situations where a longstanding principle was being challenged.
"All the hoovering, cleaning, ironing, dusting and anything else we need her to do", said B excitedly, "for only £10 per hour, and what's more, she will only need to come for 2 hours every other week!"
One of us is in for a real shock here. Either B's been oversold the ability of this domestic hot shot, or I lived my entire bachelor years in relative squalor because of some ill-held belief about the net worth of home help. You didn't think I did it myself did you.........?