When I'm Cleaning Windows

[poliphilo]

I have a sponge that fits at the end of a pole. The pole comes in segments that fit together- like a chimney sweep's brush. Today  I used it to wash the bedroom windows at the front. I don't like to think how long it is since those windows were last washed. A couple of years perhaps.

I won't have a window cleaner. I've been stung by window cleaners in the past. Nice Mr Bardsley sold his window cleaning business to a young guy who sold it on to another young guy- and so on and so on until it passed into the hands of a clumsy amateur burglar who removed the beading from around one of our kitchen windows until something startled him and he fled leaving the nefarious job half done.  We were discussing window cleaners with Ruth yesterday. She's pretty certain her window cleaner charges her for work he hasn't done.

Enough of that. Let's talk about something else. Yesterday we went to visit Nic and John and our ten day old great niece Isabel. Babies are awesome. Not cute-- cute misses the point. You hold a new born baby- so fragile, with its huge eyes and stick-like arms- and you're holding what comes next in human history. You're holding all sorts of marvels you yourself are never going to live to see. Nunc dimittis.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's the opening of the canticle voiced by the aged Simeon when the infant Christ was presented to him in the temple. In English it goes like this:

"Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I do recognise that, from my churchgoing days I guess.