Good housekeeping

I am lucky enough to live in a country where it is not overly expensive to employ "a lady who does" - a maid in the usual parlance. And a real godsend she is. Apart from being very efficient, and working long hours - from 1 till 6 five days a week - she has the amazingly rare quality of understanding space. Our space. By that I mean, if we are in the kitchen, having lunch or making a snack, she will make sure she is doing something somewhere else.

Having experienced home help in other people's houses, (much bigger than our 240 square metre flat here), I really know how lucky we are. In Hong Kong, during our brief refuge in May, a new maid had just started at the house where we were staying. As a favour to my hosts, (the wife was away, and the husband was working), I tried to pass on a few tips. But it was clear to me that the maid had little or no experience, and the best tip I could give was to my hosts: interview another candidate.

In Scotland at the castle a "daily" appears early, 4 days a week. In a place that is so large, it is extraodinary that she has the ability to make so much noise that she can even wake the ghosts of centuries' past by overuse of the vacuum cleaner, with a particular skill of dragging it across stone floors . And if you blink, she's gone. But her continued employment is viewed as an act of local charity by her employer. When we have lived at the castle on our own, caretaking it, I have requested that the lady be given the time off during our stay, as the main chore for me is getting up from my warm comfortable bed and going down to unlock the door to allow her to let herself in. And then of course there is a brief flurry of activity and noise before the quietude one so cherishes, returns.

The important thing is of course to establish what you want as an employer from the outset. And it's useful to know a bit about what duties should be. I have been lucky enough to have help all of my life, except when we lived briefly in Edinburgh. There we had twice the space we have here, but having watched and observed the staff we have had over the years, and indeed learning how to iron from our amah in Hong Kong, I know what it takes, and what to expect. And everyone should learn and know how to clean a lavatory. Apart from being good for the soul, it puts much into perspective.

I enjoyed this piece from The Guardian: Homes: Spick and span which provides some useful tips about how to keep a place clean.

Now I just need to go and reach for my ostrich plumes. For my head of course, you fools.