Let me introduce you to Hilda. Really, Hilda is a hoot in small doses. She has the mentality of a 6 year old, and yet is 40-odd. She will do a job, if you explain thoroughly enough, and when she has done it she will come to you and say, ‘Finished!’ while you have to then spare your time to go and find something else to occupy her. I’m not sure how she has been brought up but I do know that it was not entirely the same as the rest of us. Both Jess and myself have had a flash of either her bust or her buttock as she has lifted her top and pulled down her trousers to show us her new bruise that she acquired today.
I once told her to Hoover the shop, and reminded her to keep an eye on the lead and warn any customers that looked as though they were about to trip over it. She leapt into this task with an enormous burst of enthusiasm as she ran around the shop tapping each customer on the shoulder and informing them, ‘Excuse me, mind the lead’, even if they were quietly minding their own business at the complete opposite end of the shop to the Hoover. When I came out into the shop floor she announced loudly so that all of these customers could hear, ‘I did what you said Belinda, I’ve been minding people of the lead’.
‘Well done Hilda,’ I said, as I saw the other customers smile and shake their heads. Perhaps I should get Hilda to permanently guard the step. That could be rather effective actually…
Her odd behaviour comes as no surprise when you meet the family. Hilda collects thimbles, her mother collects dolphin ornaments and her father collects spoons. She once asked Jess if she collected anything, to which she replied ‘no’, and it was at this moment that we found out that her brother collects porn movies. She must have seen Jess’ reaction, as she asked her, ‘That alright isn’t it?’
I must say that working with a mixture of ages and abilities provides many more laughs than working with an office full of bitching women of your own age and character. Yesterday, Hilda made us all a nice cup of tea, I glanced at it as she put it down and thought, ‘That looks good, I’ll wait for it to cool and drink it in a minute.’ Then I heard Hilda scream from the kitchen, ‘Urgh!’ and a few moments later, ‘This kettle doesn’t boil very well does it!’ I stopped for a moment as I thought, well a kettle either boils or it doesn’t, and in my experience, that one does, before I then heard her exclaim, ‘Oh, I forgot to switch the plug on’. A few more moments passed, as you could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain, then she rushed out to gather up our cups and said, ‘Yours might be cold too’ before scuttling off to make us some new ones. I creased over with laughter. On her return, I asked her, ‘How did you get the tea out of the bag?’ to which she replied, ‘I squeezed it’ and then I sniggered even more as I developed a mental image of her slogging over the cups for ages mashing the tea bags. I said to her, ‘You must have been there for hours!’ and she said, ‘Not hours, but it did take a long time.’
Geogger 