Scrub-a-Dub

At the Museum our cleaner was Vin, who along with quite a chunk of the population of High Wycombe came from St Vincent, and who was laid-back to a stereotypically West Indian degree. Skimming a mop over the carpets was his speciality: perhaps the intention was to keep dust down, but we never questioned him about it. Spiders in corners had no fear of being badly disturbed. When you find a good cleaner, then, you do your best to retain them.

Pre-pandemic, our cleaner at church was Jenny who was efficient and obliging and would always try to come in for a special session if we needed it: her husband has health issues so she made herself scarce as soon as covid kicked off. Since then either I, Rick and Rob, or Sandra and Carrie in the office have done such cleaning as has been necessary but with some of our groups starting up again we need something a bit more systematic.

Our social media adverts for the position brought in four applications. Two were from young mums who were looking for a bit more flexible work; they were both married in the church (one by me, one by Marion) and both have had children baptised with us so I was disposed in their favour. One was a woman who had her own small cleaning company and was well set up with all the necessary requirements. The fourth was a girl who gave as her reference one of our local beat police officers. 'She's got her heart in the right place,' PC Terry told me, 'if I need to know what's going on on the estate I always ask her mum. She's 17 but looks about 12.' There was a fifth message from one company which just read 'We have contract cleaners for all your needs', and that was so lazy I just discarded it.

Sandra the office manager and I did a couple of interviews yesterday and as suspected Diana who has been doing this for years was clearly the best bet. She even told us how much she enjoys 'going into somewhere really dirty and leaving it clean', so we might have to get the Toddler Group, when there is a Toddler Group again, to be especially mucky just so she gets even more out of it. I felt it wasn't necessary to have someone who was 'passionate about cleaning' but Sandra pointed out that we've both had experience of cleaners who are not only not passionate but would observably rather be somewhere other than standing in a church hall with a bucket and a pair of marigolds. As for pastoral connections with the two young mums, it turns out I took Diana's mother's funeral eight years ago and baptised her granddaughter a couple of years after that!