Thursday, December 14/2017

One of our chief objections to the previous flat was the ancient carpet, vacuuming of which did not appear to fall within the remit of the cleaners, though given the equally ancient and feeble nature of the vacuum cleaner (which we had on occasion borrowed) this was somewhat understandable. So it is with rather mixed feelings that we return from shopping to find Maria installing a brightly coloured largish area rug atop our clean new tiles. Cleaner, it must be said, than its fourth floor predecessor, but by no means pristine, and destined, we fear, to deteriorate, slowly or otherwise, throughout our stay. Situation made worse by the fact that we - introverts, Canadians, or simply nicely brought up - feel compelled to make polite, possibly even grateful sounding, noises, though our lack of a common language may disguise some of the detail.