Confessions of a Window Cleaner Read Online Free PDF

come.”
    Sid shakes his head. “What with that and your lousy sense of direction” he says. “I’ll be surprised if you last the first day.”
    But he’s wrong. It doesn’t go badly at all. Sid starts me off at the end of a street and gives me a few addresses and though I’m dead nervous, I soon begin to get the hang of it. I drop my scrim down the basement a couple of times but there are no major cock-ups and nobody says anything. A few of them ask where Sid is but on the whole it’s all very quiet. In fact, if I wasn’t so busy trying to concentrate on the job I’d be a bit choked. After what Sid has led me to believe, these dead-eyed old bags look about as sexed up as Mum’s Tom after he had his operation. Curlers, hairnets, turbans, carpet slippers, housecoats like puke-stained eiderdowns – I was expecting Gina Lollamathingymebobs to pull me on to her dumplings the minute I pressed the front door bell. Perhaps Sid was having me on or perhaps, and this is much more likely, its some crafty scheme to con me into the business for next to nothing. Sid hasn’t been over-talkative about the money side of the deal. I do get one spot of tea but the cup has a tide-mark on it like a coal miner’s bath and I reckon the slag that gives it to me has the same. Perhaps Sid has purposely given me a list of no-hopers after my performance, or lack of it, with Aunt Lil.
    This is a subject I tax him with when we’re having a pint and a wad in the boozer at lunch time but he is quick to deny it.
    “Oh no,” he says, “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. No, it’s the school holidays, you see. That always calms them down a bit. You wait till the little bleeders go back – then you’ll be amongst it.”
    I had to admit that a lot of kids have been hanging around asking stupid questions and generally getting in the way, so perhaps he’s on the level.
    “Don’t worry,” he goes on, “I’ve got a little treat lined up for this afternoon. Very good friend of mine, she’ll see you alright.”
    “Not Aunt Lil?” I say nervously.
    “No. You won’t be seeing her again. Not if she sees you first.”
    “Who is it then?”
    “Nobody you know. Sup up and we’ll have a game of darts.”
    And that’s all he will say. Of course it preys on my mind and I’m playing like a wanker. Two pints it costs me before Sid rubs the back of his hand against his mouth and looks at his watch.
    “Right, off we go.”
    It’s overcast and a bit sultry as we cycle along and I envy the way Sid handles his bike. With the ladder on my shoulders I’m wobbling all over the shop.
    “Where are we going now, Sid?”
    “You’ll see.”
    We’re round the back of Balham Hill and I’m all of a tingle. What is Sid up to? We cycle past a row of lock-up garages and Sid hops off his bike and swings up his ladder all in one easy movement. I put both feet down and drop mine in the gutter.
    “Clumsy berk,” says Sid.
    Still with the ladder on his shoulder, he pushes open the gate of one of the semis and does a quick “dum, de, dum dum,” on the doorknocker before running his fingers through his hair and sucking his teeth. The door opens fast and there’s a bird of about thirty, standing there, wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a miniskirt. She has a large charm bracelet round her wrist and high-heeled furry slippers that make her look as if she’s balanced on a couple of rabbits. She has a bright-eyed cheerful face and it looks more cheerful when she sees Sid.
    “Hallo Sid,” she says, and I can tell by her expression that he doesn’t have to threaten her with a gun to get through the front door. Her eyes wander over him as if trying to remember bits that she particularly likes and she steps to one side to let him in. Then she sees me.
    “That’s my new mate, Timmy,” says Sid without turning his head.
    The bird’s face clouds over for a moment and then snaps back to normal.
    She gives me the all-over eyeball treatment and I feel as if