The helps

I am reluctant to admit it but I do have helps around the house and garden. They are not my helps originally but my husbands. He looked after his first wife after a stroke and then coped after she died for several years before he met me. So I've got them by default.
My cleaner Angie is truly wonderful. She chats and drinks coffee more than she cleans but is a wonderful source of local knowledge and I would not be without her. She has become a real friend and I married her to her long-term partner last month.
The Gardener and I will never see eye to eye about anything. I could however not have managed to put in hundreds of trees and shrubs without him. John does the garden of the Catholic priest after ours. He describes that morning as his Holy morning but again he keeps me and Father Terence up to date with everything that happens in the village. Now I've persuaded him not to destroy the Cornish hedges or the bluebells or blackberries that grow in profusion along them then we rub along reasonably well. It's been a bit of a culture shock to my working class roots but I am fully adjusted now when I realize how much they rely on working for us. Johns eyes filled with tears when I told him his job was safe last week. He had been worried about my son coming to live in the next village.
I am not sure which of them was the more relieved when I said that I would prefer John in the garden for the foreseeable future. Sighs of relief all round.

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