The Best Thing That Happened Today

The best thing that happened today was working late and speaking to the woman who cleans our offices (I need to ask her name). She comes in at the end of the day, so I usually just see her as I am heading out and she tells me, super-cheerfully, to have a good evening. But on nights like tonight when I work past five she comes round all the desks hoovering with her henry hoover and we will chat for a bit longer. When she saw a carrier bag on my desk, she showed me how to fold it into a tiny triangle "so it would fit in my handbag where there wasn't much room" and when I was stood by the photocopier at quarter to six today, juggling with a ream of paper, trying to unwrap it so I could get it into the copier, she said "let me help you" and took the paper wrapping off me.

In between Christmas and New Year when she and I were both working all but the bank holidays, she told me that she's going back to Hong Kong for a holiday soon. Today, she told me she was really excited because she goes on Saturday, for three weeks. And then seemingly apropos of nothing, she started telling me how life was short, and life was precious, and you shouldn't look back to the past, you should look to the future. But not too far into the future, because all you really know about is what's happening now.

She was right, and more than that, she spoke more sincerely, more earnestly, more insistently to me than anyone has done in a long time.