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| Different application, same atavism |
Traditional “woven” laundry baskets go back a long way. My 96-year-old Grannie had one and I have no reason for thinking they didn’t predate her. But more than that bare fact, such artefacts shed light on the development of technology and the cost of labour. For one thing they reflected a period when virtually all home-laundered materials were dried by hanging them out on a line. Thus even quite poor families required an appropriate (ie, perforated) container for transporting wet stuff out into the back yard.
These days plastics is the logical solution. But, then, cheap plastics hadn’t been invented. Labour was cheap, hence the “woven” basket. Theoretically a woven basket would now cost a lot more than a plastic one but this wouldn’t allow for the fact that these days machines can weave. There’s a philological point here. We still call these things “baskets”, but it’s an imprecise – perhaps unsatisfactory - word when referring to plastics, even though some plastic laundry baskets are moulded criss-cross fashion that echoes weaving.
As if some people can’t let go of the past. Leading to practical oddities. My in-laws had a gas-fired open-hearth installed, with plastic shapes electrically lit to suggest the embers of a coal fire. Yet they were not well off. Sometimes they would sacrifice “real” warmth for “illusory” warmth by switching off the gas fire and making do with just the illumination.
I can’t say I like laundry baskets. I see them as emblems of the Monday mornings on which my mother used “to do the washing”. For some reason which I cannot explain I found laundering a depressing ritual even though I wasn’t directly involved in it. The detergent had a pungent smell which irritated my nasal passages. Even as I write, that smell…
About a month asgo I bought two of the plastic variety, one red and one black. I had in mind a system for "to be wased" in one and "washed" to be transported from tumble dryer in garage into the house. The sytsem failed miserably. They are now used at random.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: You might take comfort from the fact that had the baslets been the woven sort they would have cost more.
ReplyDeleteIn my first reference to the shortcomings of our woven basket I said it shed lengths of its structural material (possibly bamboo, possibly something else) over a period of months. In fact, it was more like a period of years. Pieces about 8 in. long dropped to the floor as if programmed and were to be found throughout the house. Like a cut flower wilting, preparing us (its owners) for the final throwaway moment.
Not exactly the same meaning but I prefer the euphemism "gone over" to wilting, it makes me chuckle.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: I doubt I've ever heard "gone over" other than when Vic and Edna talked about "the other side" meaning Calais. A very cheap outing for them since they stayed on board when the ferry ferry docked, ate sandwiches they'd brought with them and then - gleefully - bought a duty-free bottle of gin. I would have assumed "gone over" was one of the many euphemisms for dying, not at all the same meaning. Wilting simply means losing energy; drooping when refering to humans.
DeleteI have a very sturdy large woven hamper for collecting our clothes after wear. I then sort the light and dark clothes into two plastic baskets for carrying to the washing machine in the garage. We don't have basements here in Florida, otherwise I'd have my washer and dryer in the basement. I busted my knee doing laundry out there. I think I medal a medal for still doing the darn laundry.
ReplyDelete"need a medal" not medal a medal. When will I start proofing my comments before I hit the publish button?
DeleteChildhood memories of 'the washing' because it was repeated so many times over may be some of the most unforgettable, if least important. Mine feature an enormous cast iron mangle with wooden rollers that was a fixture in the bathroom where, when we were at our most hard up my mother would would dump the sheets in the bath and walk up and down on them saying she was 'dhobying' the washing. In slightly better off times the Glenniffer Laundry would call and exchange a large blue sack once a fortnight. I even have my mother's own childhood washday memories. She recounted it as the worst day of the week, coming home from school to a house full of steam from the boiling of an ancient copper, wet linen hanging everywhere. and cold food for tea.
ReplyDeleteFed: Who could know that steam might be universally depressing? My shared sympathy. My Grannie had a mangle like the one you describe and I seem to remember her moaning to herself at the hard work it represented. Yet it was as if she sought out hard work; it wasn't enough to wash and dry the knives used as table cutlery, she polished them with something abrasive (wire wool, perhaps) until the electoplate diasppeared and then she was forced to abrade them to stop them rusting. In the end she caught a cold from sweeping my mother's cellar steps in midwinter and died from the complications. But we could hardly say - or even think - "I told you so" since she was 96.
DeleteThe verb "to dhoby" (or possibly "dhobey") was still current when I served my Queen (1955 - 57). In Singapore, where I languished with athlete's foot, we even had a dhoby wallah who washed our shirts for pennies.
Polishing the knives: it was a cork and Fuller's Earth.
DeleteSaturday morning see the laundry ritual take place in our house, and I feel not a twinge of anything as I see my wife set about it with gusto. We tend to divide the chores and this one has become hers. As a valiant fellow, however, I often carry the basket downstairs, feeling quite smug in my contribution to clean shirts hanging in my closet. Now I’m off to do the dishes…..
ReplyDeleteDMG: Always a bright moment when an unknown saunters into one's blog. And then, as often as not, saunters out again into oblivion, just as insouciantly. How did it happen? one asks. The traditional route is similar to that of a cannon in snooker: the target ball is hit (or perhaps not) but the white, now the subject of unexpected influence, rolls away and hits the purple. Purple? Such a colour doesn't exist. But I did say "unexpected". This game of snooker is one that is played not over green baize but in the minds of of men and women. Subsconsciously we have observed E. M. Foster's poignant exhortation - Only connect - and our familiar world tilts tinily and we are changed.
DeleteLaundry need not be the essential link. I find you are Canadian and have a huge blog following. Science is involved but not the branch I am familiar with. You enjoy a good book (a perfectly inoffensive if rather vague enthusiasm) but the adjective is missing when it comes to wine. That maybe a stumbling block between us. I was weaned on the Big Five from Bordeaux but am now only comfortably off and those early experiences are reduced to mere comparisons.
I have ski-ed in Canada and, during a brief journalistic trip, I entered the harbour in Montreal in what I would call a DUKW but you, being younger, would call something else. It was then I discovered my sedulous pursuit of the French language, in and around l'Hexagone, mattered not a jot when it came to decoding the Canadian tour guide. The city's name Mawn-ray-awl made that clear.
I'll drop by some time. In the interim there's something I need to say about Linnaeus but can't immediately call it to mind.