The plump red-headed woman offered her services to us as a cleaner. What made her work superior (so she claimed) was her approach to doing the laundry, and the sliding scale for each type of service.

I didn’t buy into the notion that each load of washing could be assigned a particular grade, and that for this reason should be costed differently. Surely you just add a bit more detergent when you’re washing muddy sports gear? If you were to employ this woman as your cleaner, you’d just end up paying her to press the buttons on the washing machine while the essential work of dusting, hoovering, wiping and polishing would go undone.

In any case, we had the wonderful J, and we weren’t looking for anyone new.