[West Ender]

I was in Warrington hospital for 2 weeks, just after New Year, with pneumonia. The ward I should have gone to was closed, initially, because they had been ordered to deep-clean it. I, along with my fellow chest patients, was moved to the newly cleaned ward 4 days later (after we'd all had sickness and diarrhoea - as if we weren't ill enough to start with).

I was only discussing with my daughter, yesterday, that I never saw the cleaner mop into the corners of the ward floor and she never pushed that mop underneath the head of my bed - just wiped around the other end. My bed was next to the window and the only time the sill got wiped was when when I did it myself, trailing my oxygen canula, with a wet paper towel. The same applied to my locker.

The cleaner was a tiny woman who looked about my age but was probably younger. I would like to be able to at least partly excuse her on the grounds that she had too much to do in too short a time but I can't. There was no urgency about her, she certainly didn't rush, and she didn't apear to have any more energy than I had. She also didn't appear to have any supervisor making sure she did a proper job.