cleaning up

My agent rang me last week. I hadn’t heard from him for ages. He told me he’s been too busy promoting my daughter's book about growing up neglected by a mother writing a book about how much she cares about her children . ‘I’m worried Rilly’, he told me. ‘People think you’re too posh. You need to do something common’. I wish I hadn't asked him what he had in mind. ‘Why don’t you write about cleaning toilets? The readers will love it, think you’re one of them’. I’m not sure my agent even reads my blog sometimes. ‘I support the Labour Party’, I told him, ‘what do you think I am, bloody working class or something? Do you think Harriet Harman cleans toilets?’ I put to him. ‘Look Rilly, Wife in The North did it when her agent told her to. Why do I just get the stroppy clients, huh?’ I asked him if I couldn't just make something up. He said readers would be able to tell it wasn’t true because they were so used to my gritty social realism. ‘But this house has got four toilets!’ I said. My agent had bigger plans. ‘The village hall!?’ I cried, but then remembered the village hall only had two, so I quit while I was ahead.

‘Have you been caught speeding again Rilly love?’ asked the lady who has the village hall keys. ‘I haven't been sent by a judge this time, I just want to help the community’. I said. ‘Are you unwell pet?’ she asked. ‘Just let me in at four, and can you lend me some of those rubber gloves that poor people wear please’, I told her. Well, I got to the village hall and just had to keep remembering that my agent had assured me of royalties on five thousand extra sales if there was a good toilet cleaning story in the book as I went into the gents. Oh God. Nobody has suffered for literature this much since Seigfried Sassoon’s agent sent him to the Somme. Phone for sex said the graffiti. Oh well, I thought, I suppose this is all for research. I took out my phone and dialled. ‘Hello’ said the voice. ‘Fabio?’ I replied. ‘Mrs Super?!’ said Fabio. ‘Is, erm, my husband there?’ There was a pause. ‘He is tied up at the moment’, came the reply. My husband works so hard when he’s down in London, the poor darling, sigh. I hung up, finished buffing up the durex machine and then my mop and I headed for more familiar and friendly territory in the ladies.

Elizabeth's relationship with Darcy indicates Austen's rejection of the patriarchy of the Regency period someone had written on the wall. I disagree, rather although romantic love and long term commitment are quite distinct Darcy leads us to believe that the one leads to the other thus leaving women trapped in relationships that can never be fulfilled someone else had scrawled below. I sighed. If only men know what women talked about in the ladies. As I began dusting off the chicklit vending machine I paused. I reached in my pocket and found a pound coin. Pushing it into the slot I pushed a random button on the machine and a book fell into the tray at the bottom. ‘Hmmm’, I thought, bending over my bucket to pick it up, Pride and Prejudice. I sighed, as I leaned on my mop, but with a ribbed chocolate flavoured cover. Now why didn’t I think of that? I peeked out of the door to see if there was anyone around, leaned my mop against the wall, slipped the lock on the cubicle, put the seat down on the loo, and settled down to my book. My agent (men, huh) would have to wait, sigh.