I iron properly, I mend, and nobody has ever asked me for either

I can put a crease in a shirt that holds all day, turn a collar, take up a hem, and get a stain out of wool without ruining the wool. My mother taught me every bit of it before I was twenty, and in forty years since not one person has asked me for any of it. It is not the offer anybody expects on a board like this. It is the most concrete thing I have.

Sixty two, north Jersey, retired from a job in freight two years ago, widowed six. My days are long and empty in the way everybody warns you about and nobody prepares you for.

What I want is a household where the standard belongs to somebody else. I did this for four years for a woman who worked in a courthouse and had to look a certain way every morning, and the reason it worked is that she inspected. She would look at a collar and say do it again, and that was the whole of it, and I have not felt as useful since.

I am not asking to live anywhere. A standing day at hers, or two.

Nothing is paid and nothing would be accepted. Not looking for anything sexual, though I am not cold about affection. Not looking for a woman who wants company, because company is not what I am offering. Not looking to be thanked every single time, which is kindly meant and slowly turns an arrangement back into a favour.