Hard Times Indeed

By New Worker correspondent

Life under Lockdown is tough for all, but one sadly neglected minority group’s sufferings have gone largely unnoticed. Get your hankies out as you prepare to shed a tear over the unspeakable hardships that are presently being suffered by outrageously rich people. It is extremely difficult to look after your 14-bedroom mansion when your servants cannot come in to work. The obvious lesson is that you need live-in servants rather than having people coming in every day.

 It was truly heart-breaking to read in a recent issue of the Times about the woman who took a Brillo pad to her expensive enamel bath in the absence of her maid, or the person who took one of their chandeliers apart to clean it and could not get it back together. Others have had trouble finding where the vacuum cleaner is kept.

Some vain people are reported to be having manicures through their letterbox and others have ended up in hospital from foolishly injecting themselves with fillers to keep wrinkles at bay. Money obviously cannot buy elementary intelligence.

Fortunately help is at hand. Recruitment agency Polo &Tweed have ridden to the rescue.  They normally supply and train butlers, maids and nannies for the idle rich, but now their website is full of useful advice such as: “You really should be cleaning your fridge regularly” and after washing your fridge shelves: “Make sure everything is thoroughly dried before you put them back into the fridge.” It also advises: “Get into the habit of every time you enter the house from outside, to leave your shoes at the door. By not taking your shoes off, you would bring in all mud, sand or dirt from outside into the house which will only result in more cleaning, vacuum cleaning and mopping tasks for you.” Not the sort of thing you would notice with a team of servants.

In the absence of an active market for lackeys, Polo & Tweed are helpfully offering online courses that impart these gems of wisdom about domestic science that will be received with the same sense of wonderment as if it were Stephen Hawking discoursing about quantum physics.