Firing the Flying Scotsman and Other Great Locomotives by Ken Issitt

Author:Ken Issitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752490472
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven pounds a fortnight

One bucket.

One double twelve-rung ladder.

Two separate square yards of scrim.

One chamois leather.

And water from the first house on the round (hot or cold water, preferably hot in the winter!)

I was in business.

I had to buy the window-cleaning round. The price was the amount of money I would earn by cleaning the entire round once. This would be once a month. I gave the £11 to the retiring window cleaner with anticipation. It looked to be a good round: large palisaded three-storey Victorian houses, built to accommodate business and professional people and to give a good impression to visitors to the city. The houses were on the main road into the town. The fronts of the houses faced the road, the rear of the houses were in the next street.

My initial encounter with my customers was when I knocked on the door of the first house. The doorknocker was old and heavy. The door was opened by a middle-aged lady. I started to explain that I was the new window cleaner and that I was ready to clean the windows. She was not impressed; in fact, she glowered at me. This is exactly what she said, in a voice I can only describe as like brittle toffee: ‘I don’t know you.’ (Pause.) ‘I don’t know you.’ (Another pause.) ‘I definitely don’t know you!’ Here she wagged her finger at me. I said, ‘I know you don’t know me,’ and I repeated my polite introduction. She said: ‘I don’t know you.’ (Pause.) ‘I don’t know you.’ (Another pause.) ‘I definitely don’t know you.’ Her shrill voice went up a decibel or two.

At that I said, politely, that I was sorry to have bothered her and I started to move away. But she followed me into the road, still wagging her finger, rather frighteningly for me now, shouting, ‘I don’t know you. I don’t know you. I definitely don’t know you!’ Like the chorus of a song! I thought, here’s one to leave out. So every time I did my round I gave her a miss.

When I was talking to her next-door neighbour, perhaps three months later, I was told more about her. I began to feel that I should reconsider the situation, as the windows were terribly dirty by this time. It was explained that I had knocked on the door to make my introductions in an afternoon and that is why I got the strange reception that I did. Apparently, I should have gone in a morning because ‘she’s ok in the morning and drunk in the afternoon’. This lady lived alone and her behaviour was very odd, particularly in the afternoons. It seemed that she had a habit of crawling across the main road on all fours, stopping the traffic. People had got used to the sight of her. Even the bus drivers were looking out for her. So when I first knocked on her door it was an afternoon, the worst time of her day.

A few

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