Window Cleaning News

Window cleaner takes 200-mile bike ride 60 years after being given months to live: Pictured - Graham Clarke, left, with brother Stephen. Though doctors keep telling him to take it easy, it has never stopped Lincoln window cleaner Graham Clarke taking on a challenge. Born with dilated cardiomyopathy, his heart is on the wrong side of his body, enlarged, has a leaky valve and beats faster than the average person's. Medics did not expect him to survive more than three months. But 60 years on, Mr Clarke has made a mockery of the idea that illness is an excuse to hold yourself back, pounding the streets for 12 years doing 10ks, half-marathons, and, in 2007, the London Marathon to raise thousands of pounds for the British Heart Foundation.
Now, though, age may be playing a part in dictating the method of his next, and greatest challenge. Mr Clarke, of Sincil Bank, said: "My wife comes from Middlesbrough and I always said if I was still fit enough I wanted to run from there to Lincoln. "But it's just too far now. Instead, myself and my brother, Stephen, are doing a 200-mile bike ride over two days." After saddling up in the seaside town of Whitby, North Yorkshire, at about 9am tomorrow, the duo will ride south along the east coast to Hull, where they will camp. On Saturday they will continue down to Skegness, before returning home to Lincoln.
"These days, nobody wants to know if you're doing a 13-mile run, you've got to do something stupid," said Mr Clarke, whose heart has been stopped by doctors on multiple occasions in an effort to correct his irregular heartbeat. "We've had about five months' training and my heart specialist doesn't say much about these things anymore as he knows whatever he says I'm probably going to do the opposite. "I never do anything easy. It's got to be the hard way." For brother Stephen, 55, a prison worker of Lincoln, the ride represents a first foray into endurance event fundraising. He said: "This was all Graham's idea. "If you look at what he's got wrong with him, you'd say he couldn't do it. "The doctors said he should have died when he was three months old, and he's still here." Daughter-in-law Claire Birrell, 25, said: "What he's doing is his biggest challenge yet and we're all, including his son John, so very proud of him.


Warning: Ninja Window Cleaning In Progress.

Bogus window cleaner targeted vulnerable in Windhill, Queensbury and Wrose: A bogus window cleaner who stole from a 94-year-old woman after tricking his way into her home has been jailed for 31 months. Luke Brewster (pictured) conned money to fuel his heroin addiction. His frail burglary victim, who is deaf and registered blind, had lost the will to live since he sneaked into her bedroom and stole from her purse, a Court heard today. Brewster, 26, knocked on doors posing as a window cleaner after seeing a similar scam on television. He pleaded guilty to seven offences of fraud by representation and one of burglary. Prosecutor Louise Azmi told Bradford Crown Court Brewster first struck in Oakfield Terrace, Queensbury, on January 17. He conned £4 from the woman occupier by pretending he had cleaned her windows. The following day, Brewster called at the home of a disabled woman, saying he was collecting money for “Dave the window cleaner”. He asked for £5 and went off with £20. Five days later, Brewster tricked his way into a ground-floor flat in Windhill where the 94-year-old woman lived alone. Mrs Azmi said while she went to find money to pay “the window cleaner”, Brewster sneaked £8 from her purse. Brewster was arrested the next day and admitted the burglary after his fingerprint was found on the pensioner’s jewellery box.

The window cleaner abseiling down the twenty-first floor window of a Mumbai hotel might never know who watched agape as he went about his mundane job that rainy afternoon. Leander Paes. Sitting inside — unseen by the bored-looking cleaner — India’s most successful Grand Slam player with 12 trophies couldn’t stop gushing. Paes, who with great care has strengthened every sinew of his tree-trunk legs to run frenetically around tennis’s most hallowed courts, sat there commending the risky job of a man suspended mid-air by a single harness and dangling his legs carelessly.

Pensioner Edward Meakins, 83, may be forced from family home in Cricklewood after 74 years by Barnet Homes: He was told he could not continue the lease following the death of his sister. An emotional Edward Meakins claims it would kill him to move out of what has been his family home in Cloister Road, Cricklewood, since he was a boy. The 83-year-old has been told by Barnet Homes that he will not be allowed to carry on living alone in the three bedroom house, and has instead been offered a flat in a sheltered housing unit. Mr Meakins, a window cleaner for 25 years, said: “I don't want a flat. I don't like the idea of it at all. It's very important for me that I stay here.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, then facial-recognition technology might be regarded as the soul’s window cleaner — at least by state officials nationwide who are increasingly using it to catch identity thieves and other fraudsters trying to get driver’s licenses. New York this year became one of more than 30 states to deploy the controversial technology at its Department of Motor Vehicles. Facial-recognition software automatically examines digital photographs, comparing the unique underlying structures of the face across different images — flagging suspicious matches.

By early 2008, Rivera was Prime Pharmacy Group's treasury accountant and a promotion was later offered, but by October he fell ill and was often absent. When he was next seen, in good health and gambling in Crown Casino at Christmas, the company's chief financial officer cancelled Rivera's access and privileges to its accounts. A very unhappy New Year then dawned for the company when it found Rivera had stolen $549,000 in seven months during 2008 in a series of transfers into his personal bank account from the accounts of three partners of a pharmacy in Warragul. ''Some people in the community wouldn't earn half that money in a lifetime,'' Ms Fatouros said as Rivera, 23, now a window cleaner, of Dandenong, pleaded guilty to three charges of theft.

The Absurdity of Modern Exercise: Have you ever wondered why many of us hire people to exercise for us as gardeners, house cleaners, fence builders, window washers and carpenters while we pay other folks big bucks for the privilege of pounding up and down on their indoor machines to give our unused muscles a workout? I began to think about doing more physically demanding and productive things at home. I could save the gym fees and gas money, spew fewer greenhouse gases, and pocket the cash I was shelling out to pay other people to use their muscles on my behalf. Plus I'd reap the immediate satisfaction of seeing an instant yield from my muscle work: a cleaner floor, sparkly windows, a raised bed for veggies, fewer cobwebs, a turned compost pile or a productive fruit tree that would yield delicious apples for years to come. I'm convinced. There's a special satisfaction to honestly productive muscle work that's you just can't get bicycling to nowhere in a gym or endlessly stepping up stair machines that never reach heaven.

Bye-bye workout, hello chores! Does your gym subscription cost the earth? Or are you worried your maid will not turn up? Try doing the housework; it's fitness for free. Now, why would I ever want to take it up? Because it saves money and burns up calories, that's why. Except the calorie-burning bit was the last thing on my mind when my affair with the dust cloth began. After days of coming up with marvellously original excuses for benignly neglecting the house, I was surprised, when one day, I couldn't see outside! Oh no, it wasn't the fog, it was the windows, so caked with a lethal combination of grease and dust. Just as I lay wondering (on the couch, with a good book and great fudge) what to do, my quirky, busy-body neighbour appeared, with a bucket full of warm, sudsy water, a soft sponge and squeezy blade. And in about 10 minutes, she efficiently restored visibility, gave me a little lec-dem on window-washing, and cooed encouragingly (“go on, it's really easy and so much fun”) when I awkwardly, slowly had a go…If I said it was “love at first sight” there and then, I would be a huge liar.

When light shines through a back window of Spring Lake United Methodist Church, some believe an image of Mary and Mary Magdalene appears to the left of the cross. Something's there, plainly visible to the eye. What the heart sees, however, is open to interpretation. Nancy Wrenn, the secretary at Spring Lake United Methodist Church, and a handful of church members see a miracle: a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene, gazing with adoration from the church's marble altar. In truth, there is something reflected. It's about 10 inches tall, about as wide as a plastic drink bottle. It isn't a reflection, nor is it something etched into the smooth marble surface. Wrenn says she discovered the image while preparing the sanctuary for last Sunday's service. "I was cleaning the marble, just using Glass-Plus, when I saw what looked like a streak," she says. "I scrubbed harder, even tried scraping it off with my fingernails. It wouldn't budge. "But when I stepped back and looked, I realized what had happened. I realized it right away. "Our little church has a miracle."

Jason "Crazy Legs" Conti, star of Zen and The Art of Competitive Eating, the seminal documentary on the niche sport, hails from Boston and has held several world records, including the oyster, green beans and sweet corn disciplines. He's the 14th-ranked eater in the world and is a true ambassador of the sport - serving as the color commentator on Spike TV's coverage of MLE events. Conti occasionally can be seen as a window washer in New York City.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (June 11, 2008) After consuming 15.1 slices of watermelon in just six minutes, "Crazy Legs" Conti was named the World Watermelon-Eating Champion on May 20. In a watermelon-eating contest held at the Nintendo World Store, Conti faced off against his arch-nemesis (and roommate) Tim "Eater X" Janus. Conti, ranked 11th in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, was the underdog going into the competition against Janus, who is ranked 4th in the world, but when the juice had settled and the rinds had been counted, he emerged victorious, having defeated Janus by just one bite.
Janus had his revenge, however, a few minutes later when the two professional eaters competed in a virtual watermelon-eating contest in Major League Eating: The Game, Mastiff's upcoming WiiWare™ title. Although Conti initially took the lead, with 23 watermelon slices to Janus' 21, he overestimated his virtual stomach capacity and experienced a "reversal of fortune," defaulting the win to Janus.