The Wipees

They came from nowhere, these urban guerillas.  They knew the terrain, choosing their theatres carefully: major intersections, where the confluence of four or more roads meant lengthy and predictable delays at the lights.  Then they struck, moving with practised ease between the stationary, stranded cars, wielding their weapons with an imperious facility: buckets, sponges, cloths, scrapers and chammy leathers.  Trapped inside, the vehicles' owners could only look on helplessly as they fell victim to one of post-Thatcher entrepreneurialism's strangest manifestations: the Windscreen Wipers.

And so driving in London became a journey between islands of soapy, savvy assault.  You could choose to avoid the hotspots - Vauxhall, Chelsea Bridge, Clapham Old Town - but in doing so you felt that in some obscure sense you were being pusillanimous, that you were cheating.

Because it was notable that whatever the hour of the day or night, and whatever the weather, these Wipers maintained an evenness of temper, a cheeriness, a gaiety even, that seemed almost independent of how much they were given as recompense or indeed whether they were given anything for their pains at all.  It was almost as if they were carrying out some philanthropic service, providing to the motorised an analogue of the marathon runner's en route water supplies, offering mankind solace during its symbolic journey from departure to arrival, cleaning the vehicle's screen as a parable of a greater purification to come.  Not to provide them with an opportunity for this smiling magnanimity seemed churlish.

Could it be that this pleasure they derived from the act of washing and wiping had something to do with their origins?  Many were foreign, including Wipers from such far-flung and exotic places as Australia and Jugoslavia.  Were they perhaps just happy to be in this great, seething metropolis, surrounded by the swirl of traffic which was a visible manifestation of the great diurnal pulse of the city?  Did they feel in some obscure way that by offering this service - however pointless and however humble - that they were in effect being co-opted and hence accepted by the society and world that they had travelled so far to see?

Or were they so happy simply because they were able to earn about £20 an hour for work which required no more than a few seconds of mild effort every few minutes?  But if this financial aspect was indeed cardinal, it was made possible only as a result of the unique dynamics that existed between the Wiper and the Wipee.

For clearly the Wipee had not asked to be wiped; nor could the Wiper enforce any sanctions against non-paying Wipees.  All that bound the two together was a tenuous ethical link between someone who gave without asking for anything, and someone who received that gift.  In other words, the Wipers were banking on the general decency of the Wipee.  Perhaps this is why the Wipers from abroad were here; perhaps only in a country like Britain with a residual sense of fair play could the whole magic dance of Wiper and Wipee be played out.  Perhaps this is why they were smiling, and why we too have reason to smile that Wipees still exist, even today.

(24.12.91)

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