Music Blog #2 – The Window Cleaner – George Formby

It had to happen really didn’t it? In a blog from an Office Cleaning and Window Cleaning Company it was inevitable. You knew it was coming.

Number 2 on our Music Blog Playlist is of course George Formby‘s classic comedy hit The Window Cleaner AKA When I’m Cleaning Windows.

The Window Cleaner first appeared in the 1936 film Keep Your Seats Please, and was so successful that it spawned a sequel, a song imaginatively called The Window Cleaner (No 2).

George Formby The Window Cleaner

A dance mix of the song sampling only the first eight lines of George Formby’s original vocals from the first version of The Window Cleaner surfaced in the UK charts in December 1994. It wasn’t as good as the original Window Cleaner!

If you need Office Cleaners or Window Cleaners in London, look no further than Millards Cleaning Services. Established in London in 1919, and based in Covent Garden, Millards Cleaning Services offer you professional, highly trained Office Cleaners and Window Cleaners at a competitive rate.

Call us now for a FREE QUOTE on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at www.millardscleaning.co.uk

Window Cleaning Tools of the Trade – The Bosun’s Chair

Vital to Commercial Window Cleaning in London is the Bosun’s Chair. There’s no way you’d be able to clean all the windows on all the tall glass fronted buildings in Central London without one. Here at Millards Cleaning Services our Window Cleaners probably spend more time sat in a Bosun’s Chair than anywhere else. Even the pub!

All London Window Cleaners will be skilled in using a Bosun's Chair

The Bosun’s Chair originated in the Navy. A Boatswain is a warrant officer in the British or US Navy, or a subordinate officer in the merchant navy, responsible for most things that happened on the deck of a boat. A Bosun’s Chair was originally designed to haul a sailor up the mast on a halyard to do repair work or inspect the rigging. The first chairs were simply wooden planks with stout lines passing underneath it and up into a bridle at chest level. Early versions suffered from having no back support meaning that sailors would have only one hand to work with, the other holding on for dear life so you didn’t fall backwards out of the chair.

A sailor in a Bopsun's Chair later adopted by Window Cleaners all over London

Nowadays, fabric chairs are most common, with comfortable backs and padded seats for today’s pampered derriers. It’s virtually impossible to fall out of one now, leaving both hands free for work. Some models even have tool straps and built in pockets tailored specifically for the needs of the user. Our Window Cleaners have room for their squeegees, buckets, and chamois leathers. Everything they need to clean the windows of any building in London.

If you need Office Cleaners or Window Cleaners in London, look no further than Millards Cleaning Services. Established in London in 1919, and based in Covent Garden, Millards Cleaning Services offer you professional, highly trained Office Cleaners and Window Cleaners at a competitive rate.

Call us now for a FREE QUOTE on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at www.millardscleaning.co.uk

Window Cleaner of the Year Award 2012

Organised by the FWC in conjunction with Quartz Business Media for Windex 2012.

Open to all window cleaners who are registered members of the Federation of Window Cleaners, and all employees of registered members.

How to win the Window Cleaners of the Year 2012

Your employer must nominate you.
Only one window cleaner per company can be nominated.
FWC Executive members or their employees are not eligible.

Any window cleaners who make the final short list will be informed before the event and the winner announced at the the innovation awards dinner on Thursday 8th March 2012 at the Ricoh Areana, Coventry.

Prizes

One-night complimentary dinner and hotel for two people
24 carat Gold plated Squeegee
Framed certificate
Years free membership or, equivalent value gift voucher.

To find out more and to download an entry form, visit the FWC website.

Millards Cleaning Services will be sending our Number 1 guy. Providing all the entrants survive the rigorous selection process! Seriously though, we really think our window cleaners are the best. Don’t believe us? Call us on 020 7836 2601 or visit our website now for a Free Quote.

Millards Cleaning Services, for all your Office Cleaning and Commercial Window Cleaning needs in London.

Music Blog #1 – Cleaning Windows – Van Morrison

Here at Millards Cleaning Services London, our operatives are prone to listening to music as they work cleaning offices or cleaning windows. So in honour of our London Window Cleaners and London Office Cleaners, we’ve decided to start a new series of blog posts with our favourite cleaning related songs.

Number 1 in the list is the very cool Van Morrison’s Cleaning Windows from his 1982 Album Beautiful Vision.

The song was a semi-autobiographical tune about Van Morrison’s life as a part time window cleaner when he was a struggling musician playing saxophone in bands at the weekends. Rock journalist Steve Turner says that in Cleaning Windows, Van Morrison “captured the balance between his contentment at being a window cleaner and his aspirations to learn more about music. It conveyed the impression that his happiness with the mundane routine of cleaning windows, smoking woodbine cigarettes, eating Paris Buns and drinking lemonade was made possible by the promise that at the end of the day he could enter the world of books and records.”

I'm happy Cleaning Windows - Van Morrison

Paul Macinnis with The Guardian wrote: “The message of the song is simple – the window cleaner‘s happy in his work – and the lyrical vignettes combined with delicate, upbeat R&B (with Mark “That ain’t working” Knopfler on guitar) convey that feeling wonderfully.”

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. And if you need a Commercial Window Cleaner in London, or an Office Cleaner in Central London, drop us a line for a free quote. You can call us on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at http://www.millardscleaning.co.uk/</a for a Free Quote.

Window Cleaning World Record Holder…

…is Terry “Turbo” Burrows . Now some of you might remember we mentioned this gentleman before in our blog. Well we tracked down the video of terry actually breaking the World record for the fastest window cleaner in Blackpool, Lancashire.

Martial Arts specialist, Terry Burrows, aka “Turbo Terry”, 54, smashed the record cleaning three individual, 4ft (1.2m) high windows in just 9.14 seconds at the 2009 window cleaning competition-setting the new world record for the Fastest window cleaner.

The record could’ve been an even greater 8.14 seconds, but Terry was deducted a full second after two water marks we left on the glass.

Originally from Essex, and carrying a black belt in karate, Terry has been cleaning windows for 30 years, he said his success was due “to moving the body in sequence”.

“I clean the windows in just 16 moves, and it’s pretty intense,” he said.

Terry was at annual Federation of Window Cleaners Conference and decided to try and beat his previous best of 9.24 seconds.

That’s pretty fast, even for a window that measures 45 square inches, but what makes Terry’s achievement even more impressive, is that competition rules state that he must THREE windows and wipe the sill. There are time penalties for leaving any water marks on the glass, and you are only allowed to use a maximum squeegee size of 12 inches.

Terry said: “I’m elated to have shaved so much time off my record. It’s extremely hard, it takes a while to warm up and I drove 270 miles this morning so I wasn’t feeling too fresh. By my fourth time, however, I was back in the zone and actually managed to clean the planes in 8.14 seconds with two half-second time penalties.” He smashed his first record in 1995 as part of TV show Record Breakers with a speed of 9.99 seconds.

In 2005 he broke his own Guinness world record for the Fastest window cleaner during The Cleaning Show at NEC Birmingham with a 9.24 second time.

Of this performance Terry said: “I’d never say never as far as beating my own record again goes, but at the end of the day, a man can only go so fast. “I would love to die with my world record and know I went as the world’s fastest window cleaner.”