Honour for Kendal man who saved boy’s life: A Kendal window cleaner who risked his life to save a little boy from drowning is to be honoured for his heroic actions. Steve Turner, of Rinkfield, is to receive the Lifesaver of the Year award from the Lancashire branch of the Lifesaving Society at a special lunch on March 9. Mr Turner, 45, plunged into the icy sea when he saw four-year-old Kingsley Green motionless in the water off Rossall Promenade, near Thornton Cleveleys, last October. Kingsley had fallen into the sea from a slipway where he had been playing with his sister Caitlin, nine, and brother Kai, three. His mother Sarah Green, 38, then called for help and Mr Turner, who had been fishing nearby, jumped into the sea and swam out more than 30 metres to reach the boy.
The youngster who was lying face down in the water, was blue in colour and had foam around his mouth. Once he reached Kingsley, Mr Turner pulled him back to shore with the aid of a rubber ring where a male nurse resuscitated him before an ambulance arrived Mr Turner said the local reaction from people who have heard his story has been ‘outstanding’. “People have been offering me money.
Nearly every time I go out, even now, people offer to buy me drinks and shake my hand,” he said. “I have always said that if I saw anyone in trouble I would help and I’m pleased I did. “I’m a strong swimmer and so when I saw what was happening I felt I had to do something. I’m looking forward to the lunch. I don’t really know what to expect. “I’m not sure who will be there but it should be a good afternoon.” Inspector Jim Edmonds of Fleetwood Police said if Mr Turner had not swum out to save the child, the boy would have drowned. The lunch is being held at Preston police headquarters. Previous blog on this story here.
A window cleaner from Hindhead's been jailed for sexually abusing three children. Five years in jail for the Hindhead man who sexually abused two young girls and a teenage boy. A jury found Rodney Reast guilty of 12 offences, which happened over 25 years. Each of his victim's gave evidence at the trial. The 50 year old window cleaner will now serve 5 years. Detective Sergeant Paddy Mayers from Surrey Police’s Public Protection Investigation Unit said: “We are delighted for all three victims that justice has been done. Reast was in a position of trust when he abused these children. He then forced them to attend court to give evidence and relive the sickening abuse he subjected them to. We are grateful that the jury saw through his lies. Hopefully the victims can now move on and put this behind them.”
Crisis management: Aris Rakas, owner of the Rakas company which runs Mulberry, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Diane von Furstenberg stores in Greece among its other activities, said that he had been working on burning off some of the company’s "fat," such as reducing costs for window cleaning, for instance, while noting that his employees have been particularly cooperative by putting in longer hours.
HARVEY S. DEUTSCHMAN, 72, of Kingston, died Monday, January 31, 2011, at the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital. Born in Brooklyn, he was a son of the late Bernard and Tessie Deutschman and owned and operated Westside Window Cleaning for many years. He was a former member of Temple B’nai B’rith and was a U.S. Army veteran.
Elizabeth Ball, 54, of Barrows Green, near Kendal, has also been inspired by Mrs Barton’s story. The retired Nat West customer service officer has vowed to go to Nepal along with her husband Dave, 54, who is a window cleaner.
Dad’s run in aid of Dannon: A Dad from Pinchbeck is preparing to pull on his running shoes to help a charity which will one day give vital support to his son. Paul Butler, of Mill Green, will join hundreds of other runners on March 6 at the Adidas Silverstone Half Marathon in aid of HemiHelp. “My son Dannon has hemiplegia,” he said. “It’s a form of cerebral palsy and affects one side of the body. “Dannon has limited movement in his right arm and right leg.” Paul said: “Once we found out about hemiplegia we were directed towards HemiHelp and found it it helpful. “We have just been to a support group discussion in Cambridge where we met other parents and children who are in the same boat as us. It opened our eyes to how well the children were doing and we wanted to give something back.” Paul, a self-employed window cleaner, says the free service will be helpful to Dannon as he grows up and as a result was spurred on to joining the 13-mile half marathon. He hopes to raise about £500. To contribute to Paul’s fundraising efforts, visit here or call 07752 739628.
RUSSELLVILLE, Ala. — A mother is asking school board members in Franklin County to investigate why students are spending physical education classes cleaning the gym instead of exercising. Donna Sykes told school board members Thursday that her 6th-grade son spent gym class washing windows and scrubbing floors at Belgreen High School. Franklin County school officials say having the students clean the gym is a long-standing tradition, and students have been doing it for decades. But Sykes said the tradition should end. She said if she wanted her son to learn how to mop a floor, she would teach him at home.
The world is harsh, no one knows that better than she; girls especially must be strong; survival is without guarantee. Is my daughter studying hard enough? Has she done well in school, but not so well that boys will feel she is smarter than they? Does she take care of her teeth? Do not spoil your daughter, she said, wistfully. Teach her to wash a window. She must know how to wash a window. I thanked her again and thought of how far from washing windows most teenagers are. Simple table clearing can be an adolescent imposition; my daughter is startled (though good-humoredly complies) each time she is asked.
Should Parents Spare the Rod or Wield it? Is it such a terrible thing to want your children to excel in every way? When you think about it, it actually kind of is a terrible thing. Turning a child into a prodigy seems like a thankless feat. Children need to find their own happiness as they grow. This is probably the key thing for parents to remember, because if your kids grow into teens and adults who are happy, then that’s their success. Whether they become a window washer or a CEO, what matters most is that they’re in a good place in their lives and that they are happy. And don’t knock window washing; it’s a noble profession. Now, I’m not saying that everyone deserves a trophy for everything or that parents should just be happy with mediocrity; that’s not my point at all. The point is that, ultimately, kids need to be kids. They should follow their interests and find what they’re good at. If they do what they love, they will no doubt be happy. If they’re happy, they’ll have succeeded at the one thing that seems to elude so many others.
Norman Lerner has lived in Nashville for the past three years, but it wasn't until he launched his website last fall that his past began attracting attention. Lerner's photographic career stretches back to the 1950s, and after back-to-back spreads in Nashville Arts Magazine last year, the photographer was contacted by The Arts Company's Anne Brown, who liked Lerner's classic black-and-white images of New York City. An exhibit of Norman Lerner's photographs, including The Window Washer, opens Saturday at The Arts Company.
Rab goes the distance by raising £100,000 for hospice: A Stirling man has shown a lot of bottle on behalf of his local hospice over the past 21 years. Rab Simpson, 75, of 4 Braehead Road, St Ninians, has collected almost a million returnable glass bottles to raise a staggering £100,000 for Strathcarron hospice in Denny. Mr Simpson has travelled thousands of miles to collect AG Barr glass bottles, with a current return price of 30p. AG Barr began their bottle deposit scheme in 1905, with one halfpenny per bottle. Mr Simpson made his first donation from bottles to the hospice in April 1990 after visiting a family friend in the hospice. Mr Simpson said: “Her name was Betty Paton, and she asked me if there wasn’t something I could do for the hospice. “It was three years later that I had the idea. I cleared our own double garage of bottles and collected £36. “It’s gone on from there, and now it’s around £1,500 every three months.” Mr Simpson has notched up more than 200,000 miles in pursuit of bottles, and kept going despite the theft of two trailers donated to him by local businesses. Every three months or so, Mr Simpson heads to AG Barr in Cumbernauld to pick up 11 pallets, ready to fill with 550 cases of empty bottles.
The retired window cleaner said: “I have thoroughly enjoyed raising this money over the past 21 years, and the thought of reaching the £100,000 mark never entered my head. I certainly could not have done this without the support of my late wife Sadie, my daughters and grandson as well as the local community and the Boys Brigade.” Strathcarron hospice requires £63,000 a week to carry out its work. Hospice director Irene McKie said: “Rab’s fundraising efforts have made a difference to thousands of people.” To mark the achievement, Barrs presented Mr Simpson with a 1905 stone ginger bottle from the company’s archive. Also here.
Scam victim total snowballs: The number of victims of an alleged snow clearing scam is snowballing. Toronto Police say they now have 75 victims who’ve come forward to complain they were bilked out of between $100 and $150 by a man promising to clear their snow or perform other services. Det.-Const. Chris Devereux said the list of victims grew quickly from the original eight complainants after a suspect was charged Jan. 24. Police alleged that the range of services which were promised — but never delivered — has grown to include window cleaning, lawn maintenance, driveway paving and painting. Police first believed seniors were the target, but victims now range from their 20s to the elderly. “It’s getting a little silly now,” Devereux said. “The phones haven’t stopped ringing here.
Devereux alleged a man would cold-call victims, offering his services, sometimes pleading for work, saying he had two children requiring hospitalization. “I can’t say it’s been a difficult investigation,” Devereux said. “The majority of my complainants have receipts bearing (a) name and address.” He alleged the stolen money was spent for personal use, and gambling is one avenue detectives are following. The total fraud is now estimated to be between $8,000 and $9,000 during the past year. While the alleged sums aren’t vast, the victims most often couldn’t afford losing the money. “Obviously, the more aggravating (factor involves) people who are cancer patients, people with heart problems, especially with the snow service with the storm coming,” Devereux said. “There are probably 10 out of the 75” victims who are cancer patients, he added. Devereux is asking for victims who haven’t come forward to call him at 416-808-3200. Elman Iakhiiaev, 30, a Toronto father of two who lives with his parents, faces numerous fraud charges.
Search is on for mystery owner of ring found in Saltburn: Stephen J Dowd wants to return a “hopelessly lost” ring to its rightful female owner. Around Christmas time, in deep snow in the Zetland Mews area Stephen - a retired window cleaner and keen local photographer - saw a woman, man and two children desperately looking for the ring which had been dropped. He said: “There wasn’t an earthly chance of finding it in the snow. “I got the impression that the family were Teessiders and the lady was distressed as she said the ring was of sentimental value. “I suggested they get someone to return with a metal detector to find it below the snow. “Within a week, two chaps came back with a detector, but didn’t find anything. “I said I’d have a look when the snow had gone and on the second time, I found it - it had rolled under a stone plinth.” Stephen took it to the police station and they have now returned the ring to him,. But he’s very keen to reunite it with its rightful owner. It’s a plain broad gold band, with no initials but it is hallmarked. “I would recognise the couple,” he said. Stephen asks the owner to call him on 01287 625156.
A mother and son found dead in their Merseyside home both died from stab wounds to the neck, police confirmed last night. Today neighbours paid tribute to Mrs Coffey, who worked at Halewood railway station, but also spoke of how there were “two sides” to Christopher. Mrs Coffey’s work colleagues raised the alarm after the mum-of-three failed to turn up to work on consecutive days. Police found the bodies inside the Banbury Avenue property after they climbed a ladder borrowed from a passing window cleaner.
The bad stay bad, but floods make good people great: It's just not true that disaster brings out the best and the worst in people. It mostly just brings out the best. I know that can be hard to believe when we run a couple of stories a day about looters and scam artists descending like vultures on the carcass of the city. And it's important those stories get run, if only to alert people and put them on their guard. But the thing to remember is those scumbags didn't come falling out of the sky with the first drops of rain. They were preying on people long before last week.
What the tragedy of these floods has brought forth is a great surge of fellow feeling amongst the people of the city and its devastated hinterland. The most striking manifestation of that is, of course, the tens of thousands of people who have turned up with shovels and brooms to help clean out inundated homes and streets. The Brisbane City Council, which has organised the official volunteer force, has had to turn away thousands every day for whom it simply doesn't have the transport.
It was fascinating to see how such a huge, amorphous beast of a crowd organised itself. All up and down the long road broom pushers realised they could sweep a small tide of mud away from the houses and back towards the river if they locked their broom heads together and pushed all at once. Somebody had come up with the idea of fashioning a giant squeegee from the doors of ruined cupboards sitting in the trash piles by the side of the road. There were no foreman or gang bosses to coordinate the efforts of this much larger 'disorganised' volunteer force, and yet it organised itself.
Prepare for a happy New Year - Pay debts for auspicious start: The Chinese calendar is indeed a complex one as their New Year begins on the first day of the second new moon after the winter solstice. This is the time of the year when the Chinese people believe they can optimise their luck for the whole year. The New Year preparations start a month earlier, as it is a very tedious procedure and takes up a lot of time. Topping the list of preparations is the extensive cleaning. Every inch of the house is cleaned religiously, be it the floor, the window or the unattended loft.
The next time you nag your bloke about leaving his dirty socks on the floor, spare a thought for these poor women. The 12 luckless ladies all nominated their men for the shameful title of Britain's Worst Boyfriend. Tool Academy, a new show on E4, scoured the nation to find the most extreme cases of useless other halves to see if they could be rehabilitated.Faye & Harry (the window cleaner). Faye Daintree's boyfriend was so obsessed with behaving like the ultimate lad, he almost forgot he had a girlfriend. The couple met in a pub in 2005 and hit it off instantly. But Harry, 26, soon became more interested in going to the pub with his friends than taking the pretty jeweller out on romantic dates. He couldn't walk past a bookie without placing a bet, spoke in Cockney rhyming slang and boasted how his main priority in life was to get "dough for the sauce". And the window cleaner loved football so much he would tell Faye off if she interrupted a match.
Faye, 28, from Ruislip, north-west London, says: "When we first started dating, everyone was envious of us because we were always laughing. But two years into the relationship the honeymoon stage finished and our relationship deteriorated. Harry was gambling a lot and always going to the pub. We tried living together for two years in 2007, after we'd been together for 12 months but ended up living separately." Faye describes the counselling on the TV show as a "crash course" but says she noticed a change in Harry.
She says: "Everyone noticed it. He is a lot more affectionate. Now when we disagree over something, we will talk about it sensibly rather than blow up." Harry says: "When I found out what was happening, I was in shock. But I wanted to show Faye how much I loved her. I knew I had to buck up my ideas and prove I was not a bad boyfriend. "I think I have definitely changed for the better."
Not your average window cleaner... cheeky licking fox becomes an internet sensation: Perhaps it has taken a shine to the window - or it thinks the person on the other side could be lunch. Either way, the thousands of viewers who have watched this crafty fox on YouTube will have been grateful there was a computer screen between them and its sharp teeth. The deceptively fluffy-looking predator has become an internet sensation after it was filmed licking an iced-up window.
As one viewer punned: 'Firefox has encountered an unexpected problem with your version of windows'. The fox seems to enjoy its starring role, eyeballing the camera and savouring each lick, looking as though it is sticking its tongue out for its audience. More than 219,000 YouTube users have so far viewed the clip of the cheeky animal, called 'stupid fox' in Russian. Stupid it may be, but with its long pink tongue and high-pitched yelping noises, no-one would want to be the other side of the glass.
With the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster next year, a dramatic, first-hand account has been unearthed among the papers of a surviving crew member who later worked on Southend Pier. For the 34-year-old Joseph George Scarrott signing-on for the super-liner in 1912 “seemed like a dream come true”.“I found it difficult to get women nearby to get into the boat because they were under the impression the Titanic was unsinkable. But I succeeded in getting 60 aboard and was ordered away. With five engine room ratings and a window cleaner, I had a total of 66. “As the boat was being lowered, Mr Lowe, fifth officer, got in. I was very glad of this as there was a possibility of the boat being rushed from the decks below as we were being lowered. Mr Lowe stood with a revolver ready and threatened to shoot if there was any attempt to rush the boat. In fact, he fired two shots at the ship’s side as a warning.”
Irving Andre is one of the first and few justices to hold a doctorate degree in law, a gold medalist in English, recipient of the African Canadian Achievement Award and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Award, and is also the only black judge in the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton. (though he is rather sad than proud about the latter)!
When he was called to the bar two years later, he continued to work in the Ministry of Labour, as an assistant Crown attorney. During his tenure, he found a disproportionate number of immigrants employed in window cleaning and construction industries, and that they were disinclined to report workplace injury out of fear. “There was always an unspoken rule that you weigh in the risk of losing your job if you report the accident,” he says, adding that he noticed that though it was not their fault, the workers injured on the job were reluctant to testify or give information because of fear.
“I would like to think it has changed because I know that the penalty has increased. But are we at a stage where all workers feel free to come forward? I don’t think necessarily … because there are certain realities that immigrants face in terms of job tenure. And you know the old maxim, which relates unfortunately to many immigrants, that invariably they are the last to be hired but the first to be fired, so my impression is that to a significant degree it’s still the case in the workplace.”
Q: I cleaned my vinyl siding with a mixture of three quarts of warm water, one quart of chlorine bleach, and one cup of TSP. It did a great job on the siding but left white stains like water drops on the window glass. I tried Windex but it didn't remove the spots. Can you help? -Tom.
A: I think that cleaning solution was too heavy on the bleach and TSP (trisodium phosphate). TSP is a very powerful cleaner and that much bleach shouldn't be needed even if the siding has some mildew stains. A cup of bleach and a quarter-cup of TSP in a gallon of warm water might have been better. A soft brush is the best applicator, but it sounds like you used a sprayer of some sort. In any case, it is a good idea to protect windows by taping plastic sheeting to the frames. You should also rinse with clear water as soon as possible. It is possible the glass has been etched by the mixture, but following is a cleaning method to try. Test it first on a few spots in the corner of one of the window panes. Get some very fine (4-0) steel wool and soak it in Windex. Rub the stains gently at first to make sure you are not scratching the glass. If the stains soften and come off, rinse the test area and check again for scratching. If all is well, proceed with the remaining stains. If Windex doesn't work, try the steel wool and a couple of other solutions - a quarter-cup of ammonia in a quart of warm water or a 50-50 mixture of white vinegar and water. Caution: Don't try mixing ammonia and bleach - it generates a dangerous gas - Gene Austin at gaus17@aol.com.
Sunday's Super Bowl is expected to be a close one. But Super Bowls don't always play out as expected. So do the Steelers or the Packers have a better chance for a blowout win? Here's former window-washer Aaron Rodgers, who had to soothe the suspicions and anxiety of Packerland, because he was a quarterback not named Brett Favre. Aaron Charles Rodgers is the starting football quarterback for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League. Rodgers played college football at California, where he set several school records, including lowest interception rate at 1.43%. Professionally, Rodgers is the NFL all-time career leader in passer rating during the regular season (98.4), and lowest career pass interception percent (1.99%).
'Reflections of a Window Washer.' - Lupe Fiasco at present is on tour in Australia, New Zealand attending the Big Day Out 2011 Summer festival. Lupe believes in giving clean lyrics and has been very active in Haiti earthquake relief works. He runs his own clothing lines "Righteous Kung-Fu" and "Trilly & Truly"; he has also designed sneakers for Reebok. He has revealed that he is writing a novel which he says is a natural progression in his life, after having written lyrics for songs. His novel is about a window washer and is titled 'Reflections of a Window Washer.' This novel is long-in-the-making.
Sky’s the limit for Lego contest winner: Skyscrapers, supersonic aircraft, mega yachts and more, all the product of fertile Bermudian imaginations, were on display at the Phoenix Annex Toy Store on Saturday afternoon. Twelve finalists from three age categories had been chosen from 59 entries in the Lego competition organised by the Phoenix Stores and BGA, and six-year-old Dhillon Vaucrosson walked away with a $1,500 gift card as grand-prize winner for his skyscraper, as well as $100 for winning the four-to-seven age category. Dhillon’s skyscraper, which towered over the young Saltus student, took three and a half days to make and featured “a lot of cool parts like a helicopter landing pad, three balconies and a souler [sic] panel to give souler energy,” according to Dhillon’s artist’s (engineer’s?) statement. Not a static creation, the skyscraper featured window washers and Bionicals being fended off by humans with swords.
