Badgers Lay Eggs.......

We have a cleaner at work who - bless her holey nylon leggings - has a heart of gold, but who (to put it kindly) won’t be knocking on MENSA’s door anytime soon.

To say that she likes a natter is an understatement: if her broom/hoover/floor polisher moved at the same rate as her mouth, the place would be gleaming in ten minutes flat, and she’d still have been able to wash the cups up and clean the windows....... However, unlike others of her sex, the lady seems unable to multi-task, and if the mouth is engaged, all other movement ceases, and even when confronted by the back of my head as I make studious efforts to get on with MY work, she blithely continues bombarding me with tales of her little grandson’s latest exploits in the nappy-department, or how much bleach she has needed to use on each of her clients’ toilets......

This rather rotund lady is an unwitting source of much hilarity for me and the guys in the engineering workshop. She has me in stitches (much to her bemusement) when she tells me that she has recently bought a “George Formby Health Grill” (does it play the ukelele as it cooks?) and that she must wear “toadstool” boots (steel toecapped footwear) when cleaning on building sites...... The lads take advantage of her naivete by telling her earnestly that , of course badgers lay eggs! (She hurries off to spread this little-known piece of news amongst her colleagues in the business....)

When she appears for work every other Wednesday, the lads have usually got something new to tease her with, and to give her credit, she puts up with the good-natured banter admirably. If she only knew that they told a senior member of staff that our cleaning lady does a sideline as a strippergram........