Q. Re inefficient cleaners (9 June). My father has been
unable to find anyone within a 20-mile radius of his quite remote bothy in the Borders to clean for him, but he has found someone prepared to do his laundry in her own home. The problem is that the neatly stacked piles come back densely impregnated with the smell of chips and
beefburgers. How can he, without causing offence or prompting this valued woman to resign, tactfully bring it to her attention that he finds these smells undesirable?
L.O.G., London W8
A. Next time the woman arrives to collect the laundry, your father can greet her with the news that he has stupidly muddled up clean and dirty shirts while trying to find one to co-ordinate with a new suit. 'I really don't see how we can tell which is which,' he can say, faux-naively, as he shows her a heap lying on his bed. 'Unless we smell them.' As she falls into his trap. saying, 'These are all clean,' he can reply: 'Yes, they look clean. But they all stink of cooking fat. I must have worn them in a restaurant, but I can't imagine when. . . . ' As the woman redoes the perfectly clean shirts in her own home, the annoyance will undoubtedly give her pause for thought. It may dawn on her that, although her own family has traditionally derived reassurance from wearing clothes impregnated with the smell of cooking fat, her employer may be unfamiliar with this pleasure, the poor fellow. The problem will thereafter solve itself as, in order to accommodate his peculiar tastes, she will take steps not to 'air' the laundry in her own dwelling.
Mary Killen
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