Surrogate mothers

Every week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, a team of four cleaners comes through our apartment like a constructive typhoon, doing the washing up, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the floors and all the surfaces and taking out the rubbish in about 10 minutes flat. No complaints about that of course, except that this tends to make you feel like a total bourgeois layabout if you happen to be in when they come. In that case we usually end up sitting on the sofa trying to look busy and keeping our feet up as they briskly vacuum and mop around us.

The good thing is that it's like having your mother (well, a team of four mothers) around, making sure you're up and about with the curtains open at a reasonable hour. I imagine if they came while we were still in bed, they'd probably tut and yank the covers off us saying "come on, it's so nice out, you can't just mope around here all day"...