Why clean living is best avoided...
INTHE LAST year it’s been easier to travel into outer space than to get yourself across the Channel to somewhere sunny. And recently no fewer than 14 civilians were enjoying a spot of space tourism on three different spacecraft before all landing safely. Rather them than me, I must say.
And it goes to show how we always get the future wrong. I feel I’ve seen countless movies where hard-bitten, cynical types navigate the final frontier in grim cargo ships, unmoved by the majesty of space as they go about their dreary roles as galactic HGV drivers.
Holidays in zero gravity played no part in our imaginings of what the future would hold.though when you think about it the allure of long-haul tourism to out-of-theway places has always been to boldly go where no man has gone before – or at least not too many of them.
In fact the future of space travel now looks to be more like an old-style package holiday with knobs on. If Elon Musk’s Spacex doesn’t lay on a complimentary cocktail, an all-you-can-eat buffet and a folkloric evening, they’ll be missing a trick.
BAKE OFF’S Prue Leith, right, claimed that people under 35 wouldn’t be familiar with malt loaf.
Try telling that to my three offspring who chomped their way through many a treacly, fruity Soreen loaf during their childhood, the thick slices (you can’t do a thin slice) topped with hefty slabs of butter. The very thought of that jaw-clamping stodge makes my mouth water. I imagine malt loaf will be flying off the supermarket shelves for a couple of weeks.
WHEN Jeremiah James Colman was asked how he had made such a vast fortune from the sale of mustard he answered: “I make my money from the mustard that people throw away on the sides of their plate”...or squirt on the ceiling.
One of the really tiresome things about the upper class (and especially the upper class in uniform or bow- ties) is a fondness for practical jokes, food fights and asinine pranks – all of which require cleaning up by a dedicated team of uncomplaining flunkies.
I thought a lot of Prince Philip but admire him slightly less now that I know about him entertaining his grandchildren by shooting mustard to the ceiling (as revealed in last week’s BBC One documentary Prince Philip:the Royal Family Remembers).
Her Majesty was not best pleased and you can imagine the eye-rolling below stairs too. Oh please, not the mustard routine again... fetch the long-handled squeegee.
ISN’T IT odd that the UN’S big climate change talking shop – COP 26 – to be held in Glasgow next month and urgently concerned with reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, comes at a time when any number of businesses were about to fold because of a shortage of CO2?
LEANLINESS, we were always led to believe, is next to godliness.that’s no longer true because being virtuous and saving the planet mean that we should wash our clothes rather less often than we do now. So says the Society of Chemical Industry magazine, urging us to wear clothes more than once (with the exception – thank heavens – of underwear).
In the past, cleanliness in the clothing department took time and effort. Sheets and clothes were put in a “copper” and boiled clean. Monday was washday, so I believe. It must have been a terrible, exhausting palaver. All those heavy wet sheets to haul around. Mangles. Steam. Imagine. I get tired enough handwashing a scrap of cashmere.
Cleanliness stopped being quite so virtuous when it became easier to bung something in the washing machine than go to the bother of hanging it up or folding it and putting it away. It’s also easier to put something in the wash than to attend to small marks with a brush or a damp sponge.
Stella Mccartney, who learnt her trade on Savile Row (where soft tweeds and Prince of Wales check don’t take kindly to being hurled around in a tub at 40 degrees), says: “If you don’t absolutely have to clean anything, don’t clean it.”
The same goes for personal cleanliness. If you have to break the ice in a basin to wash yourself it’s obviously more praiseworthy than standing under a waterfall shower with a fluffy towel awaiting, warming on a heated towel rail. When washing is a pleasure it can hardly be a virtue as well.
IVIA FIRTH, who used to be married to Colin Firth and runs a sustainability consultancy called Eco-age, says: “One wants to be clean, obviously. I try to apply good judgment and go with the rule that when clothes smell they need to be washed.” Hmm... I tend to think clothes should be washed slightly before they start to smell. But then I don’t suppose Livia Firth has to spend that much time on public transport where far too many people, frankly, stink.
Confession. During lockdowns I did find myself wearing the same thing two days’ running and nobody (as far as I know) reeled back in horror. It may have had something to do with two-metre distancing of course.
And I can’t deny that I feel virtuous as I consider that less washing of my clothes means fewer microfibres and detergents leaching into our water. And less use of the washing machine and dryer is undoubtedly a good thing. Did you know that 70 per cent of the carbon emissions created during the life of a cotton T-shirt are down to washing and drying?
Once you know this you feel a little glow of virtue, proving it’s semi-cleanliness that’s next to godliness.