Window Cleaner Quotes

A brick makes an excellent window cleaner, if you throw it hard enough. Before you know it, your window will look so clean you’d think it had been replaced with a new one.


I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboard of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. I was born an insomniac and that's the way I'll die, wasting thousands of hours along the way longing for unconsciousness, longing for a rubber mallet to crack me in the hear, not so hard, not hard enough to do any damage, just a good whack to put me down for the night. But that night I didn't have a chance. I stared into the blackness until the blackness blurred into gray, until the ceiling above me began to take form and the light from the east dribbled in through the narrow barred window.

A brick could be used to declare war on a country made of glass. I’ll bet those citizens would love to drink vodka dyed blue like window cleaner. 


she was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.

In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith, especially in the “young married set,” there were many women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their “wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas” in unpaid social work, and still more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back.

What saves me is people. Strangers. Old women. Shopkeepers. Young lovers and milkmen doing their rounds and window cleaners with ladders fixed on top of their vans. Individuals oblivious to one another and yet, in a way, they act like insurance. An invisible web. Nothing too bad will happen on the street of a small town like this because people are everywhere. If something heinous occurs, then it's likely to be short-lived. Terrible acts are more difficult to conceal in a place like this. Someone will eventually step in or call the police. Horrors can still take place, but people look after people even though they might never think of it that way.

So we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind I ask them to desist and to refrain And then we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop)Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code We shook our fists at the punishing rain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon Well, he knew exactly who to blame And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop) Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix! Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!(Doop doop doop doop dooop) Well, I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet Ask me things, but I don't know where to start They ignite the power-trail ssstraight to my father's heart And once again I call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)We call upon the author to explain Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought? I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it's fucked up and he is a fucker But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain I call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious diseease Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions Well, it does in your brain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window (Hey Doug, how you been?) Brings me back a book on holocaust poetry complete with pictures Then tells me to get ready for the rain And we call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best! He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain We call upon the author to explain (Doop doop doop doop dooop ...) Down in my bolthole I see they've published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish "The waves, the waves were soldiers moving". Well, thank you, thank you, thank you And again I call upon the author to explain Yeah, we call upon the author to explain Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

Standing in the hallway, I imagine the smell settling like snow on my hair and my skin, breathing it like smoke into my nose and mouth; how it curls its way into the fibers of my clothing and the hollows of my ears. Like death, it is an old smell; so fundamentally human that it can only be disavowed. You avoid this smell each time you take a shower and each time you wash your hands. Each time you brush your teeth or flush the toilet, or launder your sheets and towels. With every plate you scrub clean, every spill you mop up and every bag of trash you tie up and throw out. Every time you open a window or walk outside, breathing deeply, to stretch your legs and stand in sunlight. This smell is the lingering presence of all the physical things we put into and wash off ourselves. But it is equally the ineffable smell of defeat, of isolation, of self-hate. Or, more simply, it is the smell of pain.

A loud whine cut through the day's quiet and Josie looked out the window to find a man wearing some kind of jetpack attached to a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. A leaf blower. The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human using a leaf blower. With this machine, the man was saying, I will murder all quiet. I will destroy the aural plane. And I will do so with a machine that performs a task far less efficiently than I could with a rake.

the building. The Regency Hotel was shaped like a wedge and the bingo hall was at the thin end. Connor climbed up the steps to the bingo hall and peered in through the porthole windows of the main entrance. Inside the place was as dark as could be, but when he tugged the door handle, it gave way. Surprised, Connor looked back over his shoulder before he risked anything further. There were a couple of seafront workers heading down the hill, but they seemed more than willing to ignore him. Connor walked into the darkness, and pulled the door shut behind him. He found himself in a dark lobby which stank of cheap carpet cleaner and cigarette smoke. Connor held his breath and walked through another set of double doors. As he pushed the doors, keys jangled on the other

For most people moving is a tiring experience. When on the verge of moving out to a new home or into a new office, it's only natural to focus on your new place and forget about the one you’re leaving. Actually, the last thing you would even think about is embarking on a heavy duty move out clean. However, you can be certain that agents, landlords and all the potential renters or buyers of your old home will most definitely notice if it's being cleaned, therefore getting the place cleaned up is something that you need to consider. The process of cleaning will basically depend to things; how dirty your property and the size of the home. If you leave the property in good condition, you'll have a higher the chance of getting back your bond deposit or if you're selling, attracting a potential buyer. Below are the steps you need to consider before moving out. You should start with cleaning. Remove all screws and nails from the walls and the ceilings, fill up all holes and dust all ledges. Large holes should be patched and the entire wall checked the major marks. Remove all the cobwebs from the walls and ceilings, taking care to wash or vacuum the vents. They can get quite dusty. Clean all doors and door knobs, wipe down all the switches, electrical outlets, vacuum/wipe down the drapes, clean the blinds and remove all the light covers from light fixtures and clean them thoroughly as they may contain dead insects. Also, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and empty all cupboards when you clean them. Clean all windows, window sills and tracks. Vacuum all carpets or get them professionally cleaned which quite often is stipulated in the rental agreement. After you've finished the general cleaning, you can now embark on the more specific areas. When cleaning the bathroom, wash off the soap scum and remove mould (if any) from the bathroom tiles. This can be done by pre-spraying the tile grout with bleach and letting it sit for at least half an hour. Clean all the inside drawers and vanity units thoroughly. Clean the toilet/sink, vanity unit and replace anything that you've damaged. Wash all shower curtains and shower doors plus all other enclosures. Polish the mirrors and make sure the exhaust fan is free of dust. You can generally vacuum these quite easily. Finally, clean the bathroom floors by vacuuming and mopping. In the kitchen, clean all the cabinets and liners and wash the cupboards inside out. Clean the counter-tops and shine the facet and sink. If the fridge is staying give it a good clean. You can do this by removing all shelves and wash them individually. Thoroughly degrease the oven inside and out. It's best to use and oven cleaner from your supermarket, just take care to use gloves and a mask as they can be quite toxic. Clean the kitchen floor well by giving it a good vacuum and mop . Sometimes the kitchen floor may need to be degreased. Dust the bedrooms and living room, vacuum throughout then mop. If you have a garage give it a good sweep. Also cut the grass, pull out all weeds and remove all items that may be lying or hanging around. Remember to put your garbage bins out for collection even if collection is a week away as in our experience the bins will be full to the brim from all the rubbish during the moving process. If this all looks too hard then you can always hire a bond cleaner to tackle the job for you or if you're on a tight budget you can download an end of lease cleaning checklist or have one sent to you from your local agent. Just make sure you give yourself at least a day or to take on the job. Its best not to rush through the job, just make sure everything is cleaned thoroughly, so it passes the inspection in order for you to get your bond back in full.

As Frank promised, there was no other public explosion. Still. The multiple times when she came home to find him idle again, just sitting on the sofa staring at the rug, were unnerving. She tried; she really tried. But every bit of housework—however minor—was hers: his clothes scattered on the floor, food-encrusted dishes in the sink, ketchup bottles left open, beard hair in the drain, waterlogged towels bunched on bathroom tiles. Lily could go on and on. And did. Complaints grew into one-sided arguments, since he wouldn’t engage. “Where were you?” “Just out.” “Out where?” “Down the street.” Bar? Barbershop? Pool hall. He certainly wasn’t sitting in the park. “Frank, could you rinse the milk bottles before you put them on the stoop?” “Sorry. I’ll do it now.” “Too late. I’ve done it already. You know, I can’t do everything.” “Nobody can.” “But you can do something, can’t you?” “Lily, please. I’ll do anything you want.” “What I want? This place is ours.” The fog of displeasure surrounding Lily thickened. Her resentment was justified by his clear indifference, along with his combination of need and irresponsibility. Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty. On that snowy day when he asked to borrow all that money to take care of his sick sister in Georgia, Lily’s disgust fought with relief and lost. She picked up the dog tags he’d left on the bathroom sink and hid them away in a drawer next to her bankbook. Now the apartment was all hers to clean properly, put things where they belonged, and wake up knowing they’d not been moved or smashed to pieces. The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang’s cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. That was what her parents had taught her and what she had promised them: To choose, they insisted, and not ever be moved. Let no insult or slight knock her off her ground. Or, as her father was fond of misquoting, “Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A tougher lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it.” The afternoon Frank left, Lily moved to the front window, startled to see heavy snowflakes powdering the street. She decided to shop right away in case the weather became an impediment. Once outside, she spotted a leather change purse on the sidewalk. Opening it she saw it was full of coins—mostly quarters and fifty-cent pieces. Immediately she wondered if anybody was watching her. Did the curtains across the street shift a little? The passengers in the car rolling by—did they see? Lily closed the purse and placed it on the porch post. When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

This Girl I Knew Glasses, bad bangs, patched blue jeans, creek-stained tennis shoes caked in mud, a father who sells vacuum cleaners, a mother skinny as a nun, a little brother with straw-colored hair and a scowling, confused look in the pews at church: this girl I knew. House at the edge of town, crumbling white stucco. Dog on a chain. Weeds. Wildcat Creek trickling brown and frothy over rocks out back, past an abandoned train trestle and the wreck of an old school bus left to rot. This girl I knew, in whatever room is hers, in that house with its dust-fogged attic windows, its after-dinner hours like onions soft in a pan. Her father sometimes comes for her, runs a hand through her hair. Her mother washes every last stick of silverware, every dish. The night sky presses down on their roof, a long black yawn spiked with stars, bleating crickets. The dog barks once, twice. Outside town, a motorcycle revs its engine: someone bearing down. Then nothing. Sleep. This girl I knew dreams whatever this girl I knew dreams. In the morning it’s back to school, desks, workbooks, an awkwardly held pencil in the cramped claw of a hand. The cigarette and rosewater scent of Ms. Thompson at the blackboard. The flat of Ms. Thompson’s chest, sunburned and freckled, where her sweater makes a V. You should be nice to her, my mother says about this girl I knew. I don’t want to be nice to her, I say to my mother. At recess this girl I knew walks around the playground, alone, talking to herself: elaborate conversations, hand gestures, hysterical laughing. On a dare from the other girls this girl I knew picks a dandelion, pops its head with her thumbnail, sucks the milky stem. I don’t want to be nice to her. Scabbed where she’s scratched them, mosquito bites on her ankles break and bleed. Fuzzy as a peach, the brown splotch of a birthmark on her arm. The way her glasses keep slipping down her nose. The way she pushes them up.

GROUP FIFTEEN had its own private medical facilities attached to a well-known London teaching hospital. State-of-the-art facilities, the best doctors in the country, absolute discretion. Control watched through the window as the surgeon bent low to examine the damage that had been done to Twelve’s knee. The man—and his three colleagues—were wearing green smocks, their faces covered by surgical masks and latex gloves over their hands. Twelve had been anaesthetised and was laid out on the operating table, covered by a sheet with a long vertical slit that allowed easy access to his right leg. The surgeon had already sliced open his knee, a neat incision that began just below the quadriceps and curved around the line of his leg. The opening was held open by medical clips, and a miniature camera on an articulated arm had been positioned overhead, its feed visible on the large screen that was fixed to the wall in the observation suite.

I knew the Tam were already a success by the greeting I got. The women in their canoes in the middle of the lake called out loud hellos that I heard over my engine, and a few men and children came down to the beach and gave me big floppy Tam waves. A noticeable shift from the chary welcome we’d received six weeks earlier. I cut the engine and several men came and pulled the boat to shore, and without my having to say a word two swaybacked young lads with something that looked like red berries woven in their curled hair led me up a path and down a road, past a spirit house with an enormous carved face over the entryway—a lean and angry fellow with three thick bones through his nose and a wide open mouth with many sharp teeth and a snake’s head for a tongue. It was much more skilled than the Kiona’s rudimentary depictions, the lines cleaner, the colors—red, black, green, and white—far more vivid and glossy, as if the paint were still wet. We passed several of these ceremonial houses and from the doorways men called down to my guides and they called back. They took me in one direction then, as if I wouldn’t notice, turned me around and doubled back down the same road past the same houses, the lake once again in full view. Just when I thought their only plan was to parade me round town all day, they turned a corner and stopped before a large house, freshly built, with a sort of portico in front and blue-and-white cloth curtains hanging in the windows and doorway. I laughed out loud at this English tea shop encircled by pampas grass in the middle of the Territories. A few pigs were digging around the base of the ladder. From below I heard footsteps creaking the new floor. The cloth at the windows and doors puffed in and out from the movement within. ‘Hallo the house!’ I’d heard this in an American frontier film once. I waited for someone to emerge but no one did, so I climbed up and stood on the narrow porch and knocked on one of the posts. The sound was absorbed by the voices inside, quiet, nearly whispery, but insistent, like the drone of a circling aeroplane. I stepped closer and pulled the curtain aside a few inches. I was struck first by the heat, then the smell. There were at least thirty Tam in the front room, on the floor or perched oddly on chairs, in little groups or even alone, everyone with a project in front of them. Many were children and adolescents, but

Since Paul wasn’t a big conversationalist—he was the anti-Mac, in other words, and today had been the longest she’d ever heard him speak in consecutive sentences—Jena watched the scenery for a while. Then she decided to study the inside of Paul’s truck to see what she could learn about him. Technically, it was exactly like hers and Gentry’s. It had a black exterior with a blue light bar across the top and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division logo on the doors. It was tech heavy on the front dash, just like theirs, with LDWF, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, and Louisiana State Police Troop C radios, a laptop, a GPS unit, and a weather unit. In her truck and in Gentry’s, the cords and wires were a colorful tangle of plastic and metal, usually with extra plugs dangling around like vines. Paul’s cords were all black, and he had them woven in pairs and tucked underneath the dash, where they neatly disappeared. She leaned over to see how he’d achieved such a thing, and noticed identical zip ties holding them in place. “Sinclair, I hate to ask, but what are you doing?” He sounded more bemused than annoyed, so she said, “I’m psychoanalyzing you based on the interior of your truck.” He almost ran off the road. “Why?” “Your scintillating conversation was putting me to sleep.” His dark brows knit together but he seemed to have no answer to that. She turned around in her seat, as much as the seat belt allowed, and continued her study. Paul had a 12-gauge shotgun and a .223 carbine mounted right behind the driver’s seat, same as in her own truck. The mounts had hidden release buttons so the agents could get the guns out one-handed and quickly. But where her truck had a catch-all supply of stuff, from paper towels to zip ties to evidence bags to fast-food wrappers thrown in the back, Paul’s backseat was empty but for a zippered storage container normal people used for shoes. Each space held different things, all neatly arranged. Jena spotted evidence bags in one. Zip ties in another. Notebooks. Citation books. Paperwork. A spare uniform hung over one window, with a dry-cleaner’s tag dangling from the shirt’s top button. Good Lord. She turned back around. “What did you learn?” Paul finally asked. “You’re an obsessive-compulsive neat freak,” she said. “Accent on freak.

He stared in stupefaction as a group of teenagers smashed the window of a parked police car.

CHRISTOPHER CALLAN, Number Twelve, drove across town to Hackney, following his satnav to Victoria Park. It was a hot, sticky night, and he drove with the windows open, the warm breeze blowing onto his face. He looked around distastefully. It was a mongrel area: million-pound houses cheek by jowl with slumlike high-rises. He reversed into a parking space in one of the better streets, locked the car, and set off the rest of the way on foot. His destination was marked on his phone’s map, and he followed it across the southern end of the park, alongside a wide boating lake with a fountain throwing water into the air and Polish immigrants fishing for their dinners from the banks. Finally, he turned onto Grove Road.

The houses behind the shops had recently been used for social housing, but as time passed and their tenants were moved into the high-rise blocks that dominated the nearby skyline, they had been allowed to begin their long slide into decrepitude. Those that were left vacant were boarded up. Damaged roofs were left unrepaired. Windows were shattered and left open to the rain. Four houses had been gutted by fire, the exposed bricks crusted black with soot and ash and the timbers exposed like cracked and broken bones. Those buildings had been condemned and demolished, tearing holes in the terrace like the teeth yanked from a cancerous mouth. Boards had been erected around the blackened remnants of the extension, and these had been scarified by graffiti and posters for illegal raves.

The sound of alarms filled the air, loud and declamatory, and beneath their sharp screech came the occasional noise of windows shattering and the hubbub of shouts and shrieks from the rioters on the street.

Milton had parked in the nearby NCP building. He swept the detritus from the passenger seat, opened the door, waited until she was comfortable, and then set off, cutting onto the Embankment. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was staring fixedly out of the window, watching the river. It didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. Fair enough. He switched on the CD player and skipped through the discs until he found the one he wanted to listen to, a Bob Dylan compilation. Dylan’s reedy voice filled the car as Milton accelerated away from a set of traffic lights.

He turned to face the window again, the door closing softly behind him. He gazed through the cloud of cigar smoke, through his pensive reflection and out into the darkness beyond. Traffic streamed along Millbank on the other side of the river, tail lights leaving a red smear across the tarmac. He thought of Milton.

Window frames were rotting, paint peeling like leprous scabs. Concrete had crumbled like meringue, the steel wires that lent support to the structure poking out like the ribs of a decaying carcass. Milton looked around.

A few days later, I was hunting under the bathroom sink for a bottle of window cleaner. Which I had, in my naivete, assumed only cleaned windows. As per the label. While cleaning the mirror I’d been using the kitchen cleaner, which had falsely labeled itself as “all-purpose.” It was not all-purpose and made bathroom mirrors streaky. “Deceitful advertising,” I mumbled to myself. Once I found the window cleaner, the internet recommended I not use paper towels but since this wasn’t 1996, we didn’t have any newspaper. I also highly doubted that Tyler had microfiber cloths. The paper towels worked well enough. Which freed me up to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: daydreaming about Tyler. It was one of the few ways to make chores entertaining. I imagined him coming home, finding me in the bathroom, washing the mirror. He would sneak in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, nuzzling my neck. I’d lean against his brawny frame, loving the way he felt and how he touched me. Shivers of anticipation would rack my frame, making me rely on his strength to keep me upright. Then he’d whisper words hotly against my ear. “There’s something I want to ask you.” My rib cage would constrict my breathing, my heart speeding like a jackhammer. “Yes?” “Madison . . . how did you get the mirror so clean?” Ugh. It had been so long since I’d been with someone that even my fantasies were lame.

How do you make the number one disappear by adding to it? Answer 148.   An empty bus pulls up to a stop and 10 people get on. At the next stop 5 people get off and twice as many people get on as at the first stop. At the third stop 25 get off. How many people are on the bus at this point? Answer 149.   100 feet in the air, yet its back is on the ground. What am I? Answer 150.   A king, queen, and two twins all lay in a large room. How are there no adults in the room? Answer 151.   There was a window cleaner who was cleaning a window on the 25th floor of a skyscraper. He suddenly slips and falls. He has no safety equipment and nothing to soften his fall, but he is not hurt at all. How do you account for that? Answer 152.   What is bought by the yard but is worn by the foot? Answer 153.   The more places I be, the less you can see. What am I? Answer 154.   I am an instrument that you can hear, but you cannot touch or see me. What am I? Answer 155.   What table you can eat?

Baking soda can take the place of most scrubbing products – I find it very helpful on my stove top or counters when they get gunky, and it takes away the ring around the tub like few other things can. Just put a little on a damp cloth and scrub away. Note that I said “a little”. If you use too much, you'll spend your time cleaning up your cleaning product. For the things that need to be shiny, I like 1 part of white vinegar to 3 parts water. It's a streak-free window cleaner, you can use it when mopping the floors, and the mild acidic content will help kill germs while being non-toxic to people and pets. It will also help you see where you left any traces of baking soda – just spritz where you were cleaning, and any remaining baking soda will react to the vinegar and fizz up! If you can't stand the vinegar smell, I've heard of many people using essential oils or soaking fragrant herbs in the vinegar to change the scent. Use

This was the first time any adult had hit me. The window-cleaner winced with every strike. I felt better and worse that even a man such as he counted this punishment unfair. He did not intervene.

It was only as he was drying his eyes that he noticed the letter was typed. He knew, without a doubt, that Lola had written it from one of the offices she said she cleaned. For a second he thought it was all a lie, that Lola was working as an administrative assistant or secretary in some big company. Then he saw it clearly. He saw the vacuum cleaner parked between two rows of desks, saw the floor waxer like a cross between a mastiff and a pig sitting next to a plant, he saw an enormous window through which the lights of Paris blinked, he saw Lola in the cleaning company’s smock, a worn blue smock, sitting writing the letter and maybe taking slow drags on a cigarette, he saw Lola’s fingers, Lola’s wrists, Lola’s blank eyes, he saw another Lola reflected in the quicksilver of the window, floating weightless in the skies of Paris, like a trick photograph that isn’t a trick, floating, floating pensively in the skies of Paris, weary, sending messages from the coldest, iciest realm of passion.

IT WAS ALMOST December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane. At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were delivered by cargo planes to the landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the riverbank and watched, intrigued, the unloading and then the takeoff directed to the west, always away from the community. But the aircraft a year ago had been different. It was not a squat, fat-bellied cargo plane but a needle-nosed single-pilot jet. Jonas, looking around anxiously, had seen others—adults as well as children—stop what they were doing and wait, confused, for an explanation of the frightening event. Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. IMMEDIATELY, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE. Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family’s dwelling. He had run indoors and stayed there, alone. His parents were both at work, and his little sister, Lily, was at the Childcare Center where she spent her after-school hours. Looking through the front window, he had seen no people: none of the busy afternoon crew of Street Cleaners, Landscape Workers, and Food Delivery people who usually populated the community at that time of day. He saw only the abandoned bikes here and there on their sides; an upturned wheel on one was still revolving slowly. He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach churn. He had trembled. But it had been nothing. Within minutes the speakers had crackled again, and the voice, reassuring now and less urgent, had explained that a Pilot-in-Training had misread his navigational instructions and made a wrong turn. Desperately the Pilot had been trying to make his way back before his error was noticed. NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that final message, as if the Speaker found it amusing; and Jonas had smiled a little, though he knew what a grim statement it had been. For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

Bright Light Adaptation Disease (BLAD) is not unique to high altitude workers and may be occurring in many other areas, such as welders, winter snow sports, sunny vacationers, window cleaners, solar workers, immigrants to sunny climates, and so on. Anyone in a bright environment is at risk of developing it.

The window-cleaners had arrived shortly after breakfast and it was a kind of game trying to evade them. If I go down to the uttermost ends of the earth, Jane thought, seizing a flattened pillow and beating it into roundness, there they will find me.

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Have we got a room for them?” “We have. But not here. On the kibbutz. A couple of their girls have taken them over. Reliable people. They will be right.” “They may well need be. Have we got time to get up this afternoon? What time is nightfall here?” “You’ve got two hours, Thomas.” “Not enough by the time we’ve changed into flying gear and got back here. Cockpit familiarisation only. How are you off for ground crew?” “Two flight sergeants and a sufficiency of aircraftmen of all grades. All of them have worked Hurricanes before. Three of them were with you, in fact, in the Desert. That’s one area in which we have not been let down. I have painted the planes up in three Flights, numbers and colours. Serial numbers are on as well. You are Red One, I presume?” “I am. Jack is Green One. Patrick Red Two. Michael, Blue Two.” “Got you. Let’s get you sitting in. We can get the belts right and adjust the seats. I’ll put a parachute pack in each.” The smell was immediately familiar – glycol and petrol predominating, a faint overlay of sweat. Thomas sat in and instinctively set the seat just so and twitched the belts exactly as he wanted them. He glanced at the controls and examined the screen in front of him for specks and cracks. “Flight! There’s a grease smear lower left and what looks like a row of paint specks across the right.” “Let me see… Got ‘em, sir! Balderstone, you ‘orrible object! You was told to clean the screen and polish it good!” “Told us to get it done afore us were finished, Sarge. Ain’t finished yet!” “You bloody well will be if this screen is not perfect one hour from now!” “Yes, Sarge.” “A useless object, sir, but he was a window cleaner before he got called up. One thing, the only thing, he can do, is clean a screen.” “Get him to work them all then, Flight. The screens must be spotless, you know that. A Me at two thousand yards looks like nothing more than a spot.” “Knows that, sir. Not to worry, sir. Mr Mason-Holmes a little bit new, is he, sir?” “Green as grass. Don’t worry about him. Either he’ll learn quickly or…” “Exactly, sir. He’ll be a veteran at the end of the week or we won’t have to concern ourselves about him.” Thomas nodded. They looked at Patrick and shrugged simultaneously. “Now then, sir. We have twelve ground crews exactly, one for each pilot, and likely one spare by the end of the week for rotation purposes.” “I’ll leave that with you, Flight. Don’t let your people get too tired. If needs be, I can ground

As they moved on he was offered some STP, a powerful hallucinogenic which had become infamous after five thousand high-dosage tablets had been given away weeks earlier at the Summer Solstice Celebration in Golden Gate Park. The delayed onset of its effects meant a number of users had taken extra hits and ended up in hospital.302 Harrison declined the STP, but his response was seen as a snub. ‘I could see all the spotty youths,’ he recalled, ‘but I was seeing them from a twisted angle. It was like the manifestation of a scene from an Hieronymus Bosch painting, getting bigger and bigger, fish with heads, faces like vacuum cleaners coming out of shop doorways… They were handing me things – like a big Indian pipe with feathers on it, and books and incense – and trying to give me drugs. I remember saying to one guy: “No thanks, I don’t want it.” And then I heard his whining voice saying, “Hey, man – you put me down.” It was terrible. We walked quicker and quicker through the park and in the end we jumped in the limo, said, “Let’s get out of here,” and drove back to the airport.’303 The crowd began to grow hostile as they returned to the limousine, and those outside began rocking the vehicle as their faces pressed against the windows. The narrow escape increased Harrison’s resolve to move away from LSD. ‘That was the turning point for me – that’s when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle – it was liquid. I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn’t put that into my brain any more.

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Jeong-dae, who nonchalantly slid the blackboard cleaner into his book bag. ‘What’re you taking that for?’ ‘To give to my sister.’ ‘What’s she going to do with it?’ ‘Well, she keeps talking about it. It’s her main memory of middle school.’ ‘A blackboard cleaner? Must have been a pretty boring time.’ ‘No, it’s just there was a story connected with it. It was April Fool’s Day, and the kids in her class covered the entire blackboard with writing, for a prank - you know, because the teacher would have to spend ages getting it all off before he could start the lesson. But when he came in and saw it he just yelled, “Who’s classroom monitor this week?” - and it was my sister. The rest of the class carried on with the lesson while she stood out in the corridor, dangling the cloth out of the window and beating it with a stick to bash the chalk dust out. It is funnv, though, isn’t it? Two years at middle school, and that’s what she remembers most.

I am the window-cleaner, here to cause the cleansing pain.

I had a little ginger cat. I found him in a field, stolen from his mother, a real wild cat. He was two weeks old, maybe a little more, but he already knew how to scratch and bite. I fed him and petted him and took him home. He became the sweetest cat. Once, he hid in the sleeve of a visitor’s coat. He was the most polite creature, a real prince. When we came home in the middle of the night, he would come greet us, his eyes all sleepy. Then he’d go back to sleep in our bed. One time the door was closed to our bedroom—he tried to open it, he pushed it with his behind, and he got angry and he made a beautiful noise. He shunned us for a week. He was terrified of the vacuum cleaner. He was really a cowardly cat, defenseless, a poet cat. Once we brought him a toy mouse and he hid under the cabinet. We wanted him to experience the outside world. We put him on the pavement right outside the window. He was so scared. There were pigeons all around and he was frightened of pigeons. He meowed with despair, pressed against the wall. All animals and all other cats were strange creatures that he mistrusted or enemies that he feared. He was only happy with us. We were his family. He thought we were cats and cats were something else. But still, one day, he went out on his own. The big dog next door killed him. He was lying there like a cat doll, a puppet ripped open with an eye gouged out and a paw torn off, like a stuffed animal damaged by a sadistic child. I had a dream about him. He was in the fireplace, lying on the embers. Marie was surprised he didn’t burn. I said, “Cat’s don’t burn. They’re fireproof.” He came out of the fireplace, meowing in a cloud of smoke. But it wasn’t him—it was another cat, ugly and fat and female. Like his mother, the wildcat. He looked like Marguerite.

Most readers will recognise the seduction of the young window-cleaner as a cliché. It, or something similar, has been used as a not very imaginative 'dramatic device' in a multitude of films, plays and books. If the man involved is not a window-cleaner, he is an electrician, a plumber, a builder, a TV repair man or (in Britain, the biggest cliché of all) a milkman. In short, he is any man who has a legitimate reason for visiting a woman in her home while her partner is absent. Indeed, so hackneyed is this scenario that there is a danger, if we are not careful, of missing the important point: namely, that the behaviour has become hackneyed precisely because it is so common.