Holiday irony and some steamy scenes of ecstasy.

Steadily the tension and the mountain grew until I had to do something, something called a ‘load‘….Then I was caught in the headlights.

For reasons that are known only to Mrs Stimp and millions of others, there are two boxes of washing powder of different brands near the washing machine, both open and ready to be scooped. I couldn’t be troubled with the small print so it boiled down to a Stimple choice, one based on an irrelevance of colour or shape, still nothing between them as washing powder doesn’t have a shape and they both seemed to be flecked with specks of blue so I had to waste yet more time still on this quandary. You might think an obvious preference could be based on fragrance, but they both smelt like sweets quickly unwrapped  on a January afternoon under a louring sky outside Debenhams, so nothing to help there.

Eventually I danced like a marketing person’s best gimp and chose the aspirational product, it assured me clearly and I hope honestly, that it would ‘make me and my family look and feel great‘, that really spoke to me, what more could anyone want from their mixed colour-fast load? I can’t wait for the drying and ironing to be over and done with, so I can at last look and feel great as promised. If something goes wrong and I find I am still a shuffling monkey-gargoyle when I wear these newly washed clothes, I am definitely not going to feel great either and I will send the manufacturers a photo of myself and demand an explanation.

I hadn’t realised how much torture lay in wait before I could start to even think about sending snap-shots of complaint.

If the standard unit of measurement for a mass of ironing is the pile, and three piles are equal to a heap, then a couple of hours ago I was facing what I would estimate to be two heaps and a pile of ironing. However, when ironed it doesn’t cease immediately to be ironing, that would be too simple, no, that only happens after it has been put away in drawers and wardrobes and it then reverts to it’s constituent parts which are collectively known as a ‘wardrobe’ and never a ‘drawer‘. When the day arrives, and all too soon, that a huge bundle has been worn or used, it amalgamates again to become washing. This rainbow congregation of mixed fibres will remain as washing, even after it has been washed, until it’s moisture content is reduced to a predetermined level when it instantly transforms back into ironing. And the whole sickening process starts again.

Mrs Stimp is on holiday with some of her friends somewhere hot, it happens once or twice a year and usually her mother comes to stay and enjoy a week with her grandchildren, but shingles have intervened, which leaves me with dire domestic responsibilities, and all this laundry. So noticeable it can’t be ignored as I’m working at home this week, mainly to prevent the younger Stimps from either running away, not running away and acting responsibly or worse, finding an inadequate selection of apparel from which to assemble the next hour’s ensemble. Working from home is neither a complete pleasure nor is it total purgatory but I do find it incredible why anyone ever chooses to do it permanently, it constantly see-saws between too many and too few distractions.

As I finished ironing the last shirt, sock, chemise, curtain, ceremonial robe or whatever - after the first thirty minutes it had all become a mesmerising steamy blur - I experienced with dazed euphoric relief one of Abraham Maslow’s famous peak experiences. It was an almost mystic enlightenment of a higher truth, but I had inhaled a large quantity of fabric conditioner fumes; Comfort’s Strawberry and Lilly Kiss is definitely one to think twice about if you’re ever offered some outside a school gate.

Doubtless you know the Maslow theory diagrammatically starts with a wide base without which you are not even alive, gradually ascending and narrowing through ever more desirable qualities and achievements until you arrive at the zenith of realising your full potential. An ordinary launderer may well reach the top of his own pyramid, his Hierarchy of Needs fulfilled, but with one hiccup you’re slammed back to level three, or are you? If you have reached such a level of externalisation and self-actualisation then what can displace you from the heady heights of Maslow’s moral high ground? But then how can your pyramid hope to stay up with a couple of blocks missing?

It seems too obviously reliant on a self-regarding motivational neediness, and ignores any fairly normal altruistic compassion. Arthur Koestler’s Holarchy, a construct of his Holons, differs little in it’s dependence on those basic lower levels providing a wholeness to upper echelons, but not so dependant as some management training consultants fatly relying on a hijacked version of both concepts scribbled, spread-eagled and ‘consciously raised’ aloft on flip-charts for a focussed two-hour babble of last straw-clutching.

While I was hotly flattening away I was thinking about these two chaps and how they may have thought their clothes came naturally flat and smooth, that is if they ever spared a minute to consider anything other than big thoughts, hugely big thoughts. I believe Art had a recorded promiscuous proclivity of priapic proportions but I don’t remember reading much about any other pressing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with ironing at all, but there is a button that when pushed gives an exciting and desirably directable extra jet of steam, I used this facility frequently as it was there, so much so that I had a recurring vision, interspersed with the two old cogitators above, of the prison steam-burning scene from the 1949 classic noir and white film White Heat, and Cody Jarrett’s very much made it ma, top of the world ultimate of peak, but shortish, experiences.

Abe firstly found his paragons, none resembling Cagney’s Jarrett, and then backtracked to see why they were paragons, completely overlooking the fact that none of them ever had to struggle with two heaps and a pile of ironing and cook dinners that horrified the faces of two teenagers. What exactly is so menacing and baleful about chicken casserole? Particularly one which I had laboured on for what seemed well over forty minutes, assiduously excluding from the recipe everything I knew they disliked, which was actually quite a lot, only to have it described as, “like a kind of old fashioned skanky gruel”. This seemed a little critical but thankfully in the final analysis it wasn’t thought to suck, which though unfortunately physically possible, used in their parlance would have been too deeply hurtful.

I suppose you could just go Taoist from the start and forget slavishly building your pyramid altogether, but then I’m seeing it all from the twisted perspective of a still warm ironing-board. Traumatised so deeply that I had overlooked until less than twenty creases from the end that there is a Samaritanistic local ironing service. They would have understood, they would at least have listened.

Small moments of rapture, similar to that when I could finally relax my claw-like grip on Rowenta‘s pale smooth neck, are not a modern phenomenon at all, there is some evidence that they occurred several years ago. It comes from the journals of the prolific diarist Sir Thomas Houghton. This, from an entry dated 14th May 1757.

Have suffered a furrowed and bitter mien no better than a churlish Huguenot, from the shame of being violently ejaculated from Covent Garden prematurely last evening and was melancholically musidorous on the state of life in this our island today. What is the world becoming when Englishmen cannot for 3s ameliorate their weary constitutions in the most natural of ways, strangled eel pie, bruised turnips and a Stratford strumpet, and withal finally exagitating several sniffling personators of the stage. My custom for long has been with roisterous vociferation, to exhort and hurl pickles at many a blanched and fop-straddled player during performances of Hamlet and divers tediously vexatious plays. They do I believe enjoy such attention as do all the wretchedly famed.

With a mighty victory for the common man, was able most adroit and secretive to pursue malmsey-streaked pock quiffling Mr. Garrick along Drury lane this fore-noon and land a tremendous kick arseways on him before bolting for an ally and avoiding exposure. Was left gastrickly, nay garrickly! contorted by mirth, pride and an excess of vengeful superbia on reaching home and Doctor Franklyn was summoned forthwith to bleed me.

The unforgiving punster Sir Thomas Houghton, man of several letters and proto-picklelout.

Dear Deirdre, my hands are size C, what can I do?

To the world of slavering woodworkers the 1970s brought forth the Record 044c and so much more besides. Glam- rock flared up and lapels grew as weeks shrunk, there were stand-pipes, biblical plagues and the Walls Kinky, plenty of platforms and not many trains, dirty streets, Dirty Harry, Debbie Harry and Hari Krishna; truly the decade that had it all.

Some people have rather derided the 044c for it’s plastic handle, completely overlooking it’s cellulose acetate open-form modernity and it‘s actual raison d’etra. Record cited the excessive amount of casting failures with the integral enclosed handle design of the 044, they also stated that with the new design there was now no limit to users hand-size. Whether the devastating outbreak of Sheffield Bigmitt in the mild winter of 1968 clouded their judgement on this, is impossible to say for certain, so many years later. However, the accolades heaped on the 044c by the Design Council can‘t be easily dismissed, someone must have thought it was cutting-edge technology. I wonder if any judge on that council ever adjusted the depth stop; I doubt it.

Putting that plastic expander issue to one side, and the knurled screws that hold everything in place, the rest of it, though quite roughly finished compared to the 044, is robust enough and does do what it was intended to. Should you ever find yourself in need of a French-sized groove you could do a lot worse than consider the 044c. I think someone was going to make a modern version of this plane, but I may be wrong or perhaps it never happened.

Pete-mate did ask me not to tell anyone, presumably he meant Mrs Stimp, he didn‘t mention the internet, about his Sharon-related confession. As if I would. I told him that its as if it had never happened. It did happen though and I have thought about it since in an ambivalent way, on one hand I’m disgusted with what he is doing behind my sister-in-law‘s back, and if pressed I may go as far as to say the swine, the unspeakable swine. On the other hand, he’s just a man, like any other, who is confronted with the rejection of one woman and his feelings for another. I envy Pete-mate his ability to not analyse everything from at least four different angles, it’s so simple for him. As simple as, that Sharon has apparently got one hell of a posterior, in not so many words. He is, as always, just saying what we would all be thinking.

I’ve been researching this whole casual attitude to infidelity thing and have found there’s nothing new in it at all, there is some evidence of it possibly happening several years ago. It comes from the journals of the prolific diarist Sir Thomas Houghton. This, from an entry dated 25 th July 1757.

(The first part of which was indecipherable because, for some reason ,the pages were stuck together on the original manuscript.)

..and as I was overwhelmed by the bestial crescendo I bellowed “God… save… King… Geoooorge” as is my habit, this brought Lady Houghton hastening from her chamber familiar as she is with my customs. Leaving scant time to tuck my old bowed psaltery away before she appeared at the library door. Mrs Harford much flushed as a love-apple through the exertions of her rather boisterous fandango sought the concealment of her kerchief. Lady Houghton was thankfully without suspection of our scrim-jiggling and I was much overcome with relief and sent Mary for pickles giving her 4d.

Lady Houghton and her companion played at cards til eleven, but as Mrs Harford bade us goodnight I was unable, due to my over-zealous worship at the altar of the pickle, to contain the expulsion of a series of thunderous ventings as I ascended the stairs. Both Lady Houghton and Mrs Harford took to giggling like farthingtarts and vigorously fanning of the hall in a much exaggerated manner, my countenance was most dangerously reddened and Doctor Franklyn was summoned forthwith to bleed me.

Andalucían triple meter folk-dance aficionado Sir Thomas Houghton; coarse certainly, yet touchingly sensitive.

The dichotomy of truth and belief.

When Dave golf-friend, puffs out his chest and tilts his head slightly back and to the right, he’s either having a fit or going to make a pronouncement, and sure enough: “I happen to know for a fact that…..” But quite often he actually doesn’t. He believes and turns that belief in his own mind into fact; it could be that it’s more reassuring to know for sure than to merely believe something is reality. Reality can sometimes be a generally accepted unproven truth, but that acceptance is based largely on a desire to believe, people believed in the reality of climate-change and it grew from theory to truth for many in an amazingly short space of time.

It may well be true that our homemade carbon dioxide is a culprit and not just a gas and we can believe that, but we can still believe that it is just still an innocent gas, and that the climate is fluctuating as it always has done, which we could believe to be demonstrably and indisputably true. How did we become this ball of tail-following sardines, with ears full of Bluetooth, ignoring the hardly-hidden agenda and passively buying carbon indulgencies, like leafy twigs, to brush away our footprints? Maybe it was the contagion of mourning during royal 1997 that started the ball rolling.

I sometimes have doubts in firmly accepted theoretical truths, but I have enjoyed some serious cognitive dissonance at times. As you know, that can mean knowing that something is true, but refusing, for your own benefit, to accept it, in a way ambiguity can be accepted and tolerated, even justified. Changing your own perception of the reality of a situation to assuage the unacceptable in unavoidable circumstances you find yourself in, could be called self-delusional I suppose. I think it differs in that you are conscious of, and not deluded by, the factual known reality and you choose to adopt your version of the perceived truth and avoid the intrusion of a paradox that is impossible to accept, unless you blatantly ignore it, which seems delusional. Not as harmfully dishonest probably as Roman Catholic  Mentalis restrictio, the convenient doctrine of mental reservation, a salve to apply liberally when deliberately deceiving anyone from a child to a court of law. Just come up with an equivocal answer to a tricky question, that you know will be accepted in it’s dishonesty, and if it’s ‘permitted’ on your part to be believed, and supposedly not ‘willed’ then you haven’t lied, and you can still go to Heaven. Hooray.
 
You may be shrewdly thinking this is all flabby trumpery, and it probably is, but there is an indisputably believable truth, that my left buttock is absolute agony, I have tried standing up and perching on one leg like a heron, but it hasn‘t helped much. In the last two hours it has decided to have it’s own migraine, finally disproving my long-held theory that only one thing can hurt at a time because my right elbow is also discontentedly mumbling. I could ask my colleagues about the possible reasons for a suddenly painful double-entendre, and it seems cruel to deprive them of such promising subject matter, but they’re not medical experts, a fact that hasn’t stopped us all in the past diagnosing each other with everything from post pharyngeal-trauma syndrome to a hiatus hernia. We have never once, not even once, been able to triumphantly plead later: “Ha! Told you it was, didn’t I? No, d‘you remember I said it was, didn‘t I ?”

The weakness of the human condition is full of surprises.

Without stunning, or any other type of good looks whatsoever, or even a charming or amusing personality, it was always a pleasant surprise to find that there were women, so obviously too good for me, who would find me initially vaguely tolerable. Some were not just out of my league they seemed to belong to a different species altogether, or so it seemed in those first few months of discovery, repeatedly convinced that I could cross any boundary, overcome any barrier (yes, even that we should have speciated apart 4 million years ago). But of course I couldn’t, and as the realisation cruelly dawned on me that, yet again, things were going downhill, and if I didn’t find an insurmountable flaw in her first, she would certainly, sooner rather than later, find one in me, I resigned myself to the thrill and optimism of another fresh start.
 

Grimacing uncle Norman would be so alarmed if he read this, his grimace could reach critical mass and implode, he comes from a generation where tolerance and convention could be relied upon to cast their resentfully benevolent and obscuring shadows over every problem. This can’t be the best way can it, or can it?

While I consider this question and some others, you may be interested to know that I’ve found one way relationship difficulties were tackled or possibly caused in the past, a past we can barely recognise now with all our apparent sophistication. It comes from the journals of the prolific diarist Sir Thomas Houghton. This, from an entry dated 25 th June 1757.

Upon crossing my threshold was most enthralled to confront the comely Mary galloping down the main staircase holding her skirts so high as to almost reveal her fadge-warbler (no, a cheap whistle ladies carried for their protection, sometimes under skirts, impractically). If the fair Lady Houghton would condescend to descend similarly I might be most euphorically disencumbered.

At seven we were with neither pickle nor lobster and shortly to be visited by Mrs Harford and Lady Houghton’s sister, Miss Dulch. I called for Mary to hasten and purchase victuals giving her 4d.
Miss Dulch arrived alone, Mrs Harford being in a poor state of dropsy and indisposed to join us. We played at cards til nine when Lady Houghton repaired to her chamber complaining bitterly of an ague on her spleen.

Partaking of copious pickles my blood had inflamed most dangerously and the vision of Miss Dulch languishing gloveless on her chair drove me to belay all propriety and invite her to give my Crumhorn a blow. My suggestion met with such an uproarious hystericalism from Miss Dulch that it brought Mary from the scullery and Lady Houghton from her bed. Was so mortified as to suffer a miasma of shame and collapsing before the library door. Doctor Franklyn was summoned forthwith to bleed me.

The very much misunderstood and music-loving Sir Thomas Houghton, a man of his time, in his time.

Dangerous ground.

It’s not clear if Noah’s wife Naamah, or Emzara (take your pick), gave him and the lads a hand with his big boat build, the Cainites didn’t say, but how many post-diluvial women would have enjoyed that sort of thing?

In a perfect world, half of all woodworkers would be women, for utopianist, anti-Semite and general all round social-schemer Charles Fourier, this would have been more than just conceivable, almost compulsory, but when did socialist utopianism not contain a huge dollop of prescriptive compulsion? A question I ask myself virtually every day. Fourier, as you know, was an enlightened early advocate of feminism (his own word) who had some very particular visions of commune-living. In the Fourierian Phalanx imagined around 1808, any and every woman could expect a freedom of choice and a right to equality that was only beginning to become a reality, and then only patchily, 160 years later. Scattered amongst his more sensible ideas there is a lot of incredible nonsense, but he was a late-night scribbler.

There is a magazine and an internet forum or two and classes all aimed at the female woodworker, which could be thought of as sexist and patronising. I don’t see why there needs to be the gender-specific
differentiation,  woodworking projects very rarely require the use of a penis, and if they do, then just make something else. As to the actual number, it's probably impossible to tell, but at the very least there must surely be more female woodworkers than bearded pole-dancing blokes, and that has to be a positive thing.

To save anyone else the trouble I have been researching this whole subject and I think I have found what may be the earliest reference to a female actively involved in woodworking in England. It comes from the journals of the prolific diarist Sir Thomas Houghton. This, from an entry dated 25 th April 1757.

This afternoon the fair Lady Houghton took to her chamber badly misused by an oaken splinter after she rested momentarily on the hall settle. Being unable to testify to the whereabouts of the splinter through her skirts and petticoats, I declared it suitable work for a physick and took my leave. Was much berated on the state of my furnishings.

I called on the young Mary from within the scullery to plane and smooth the settle which she did gladly showing an undoubted enthusiasm for the task, I concealed myself most well behind the library door so to observe her rising skirts on each and every forward stroke. Such sturdiness of ankle betokens of a mighty Gavotte at some future date.
With the effluvium of the beast rising, I hastened to my bed. Doctor Franklyn was summoned forthwith to bleed me.

The much-criticised Sir Thomas Houghton, man of letters and dance enthusiast.