Iron? Wey-aye man!
I sit in this new lockdown that does and doesn’t seem to be a lockdown and I search for a distraction – a thought to quiet my mind .
Zen-like I find it. I really hate ironing. Most people seem to be with me on this one. It’s even worse than emptying the dishwasher or putting the recycling bin out.
I’d rather go in the garden and, in a socially distanced manner, flatten sensitive areas of me little pink body (me fingers obviously!) with a breeze block, than steam the wrinkles oot me smalls.
So painful do I find this task that it’s a job I willingly outsourced to a lovely lady who did it professionally; let’s hope her successful little business that catered for fellow ironophobics survives this madness!
When, in the far off days of ‘normal’, I arranged the collection of me ironing, I justified myself by giving the reason that I simply ‘didn’t have time’ to do it any more, which is selfdeluding cobblers.
If I were really that pressed for time, I’d probably have to call in somebody to help with tasks I actually do enjoy, such as whittling down me box-set backlog by watching ‘Better Call Saul’ or ‘Walking Dead’ marathons on Netflix for me.
Similarly to save more time I’d maybe have to hire extra help in trying to toot into neighbours back gardens on Google Earth or searching Facebook for people I went to school with, in order to find those who’ve worn even worse than me.
Divvn’t lie, there is a dark and wicked sense of joy in seeing the year group football hero/ David Cassidy wannabe/disco king/love god who you were always secretly jealous of, now looking like Mr Potato Head off Toy Story and who is clearly only a couple of steak bakes away from crushing himself with his own weight.
Anyway, to return to the matter of the hated ironing, research has shown that there is actually a league table of hated domestic chores. Naturally, I would have ironing at the top of my list, although ironically (with a pun hoyed in too) I’m actually quite good at it, having been taught by a hard as nails, heavily tattooed corporal in Aldershot.
It is one of the most incongruous images I can recall, as this manmonster trained killing-machine taught we recruits how to starch our smalls in the same by-the-numbers methodical manner as he would later train us to strip a self-loading rifle!
So what is top of this despised jiffjob list? Nope, not ironing, that’s at number two, at top spot lies the satanic and Herculean labours of oven cleaning.
Indeed, a third of those surveyed admitted they most hate scrubbing the oven, which is an unpopular task across all generations. It’s a job that we forget to do until we move house or buy a new kitchen – in fact it’s a job that I didn’t think actually existed ‘till I was about 30.
I thought it was either historical or even fictional, like Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. Imagine my horror to move into a new flat to find that the oven had been neglected by a fellow young single bloke who lived there before me. It now smelled like Beelzebub’s barbecue when I tried to heat up a postclubbing pizza.
To get it cleaned I eventually relented and called me mam – who in turn called some professional oven cleaners. I was gutted. If a Geordie mam can’t clean it you are beyond redemption. You are so disgustingly minging that you should be on one of those awful shock and shame documentaries about people who sleep in beds carved from their own fossilised waste!
Indeed I think there should be a mobile squad of mams who can drop in at random on any of us to shame us about our domestic chore laziness. Worse still, as they leave, they clean our mucky faces with the corner of a hankie they’ve wet with their own saliva .
Crikey, that’s terrifying, where’s that ironing? Stay safe, pets.