I did not leave the house today. The need for an after Christmas clean up and the need to avoid the rain trapped me happily indoors. I cogitated on the washing as the machine whirled the mixture around. My mother did not have a machine until the 1970s and then a hand-me-down from a woman she worked for. Until then all the washing was done by hand. She must have grumbled often about the hard work, even though as kids we often er, helped. Using the mangle was fun even if we avoided the hard part of the work. She however, was lucky!
Just imagine washing in Victorian times where much more clothing was the fashion, and not just much more of it but much larger outfits for the women. All this done by hand. The soap in those days was usually a long red block called 'Sunlight,' or 'Lifebuoy,' or some such. It meant the woman had to scrape flakes of the end and mix them in water, washing the kids in the same fashion usually also, but maybe not at the same time. It was the flakes that helped make William Hesketh Lever famous. He and his brother worked with a local chemist to develop the soap, based on Palm Oil, he noticed the scraped flakes and an idea came upon him, he put the flakes in a box and 'Lux Flakes' were born. This became the common soap powder, of various brands, we used way into the 70's.
Today, I poured a dollop of liquid into the machine, £1 a go at Poundland, and watched it go.
The hard work for me was afterwards as I then had to try the variety of raiment that had lain there for many Christmas days. I wondered where some had got to! How can one person whow ears the same clobebr all week find so much in the washing machine?
This proves indeed that the Christmas Holiday is over, housework, rain, normality back, well as much as possible. Boris lying in his teeth on TV, note the hair has been combed in an effort to make him look like a PM, children returned to school with no protection, no teachers and little hope from this corrupt bunch of gangsters. NHS worn out, told they must bear it as we 'are at war' while the NHS like the armed forces are deprived of proper equipment and support. However, this does not matter, as Boris is still there and he and his people are still coining it in!
I am not sure nurses agree.
2 comments:
My paternal grandmmother had the responsibility for the bachelors who worked the farm and lived in. She had two women to help her wth the weekly laundry...I remember the steaming coppers, the blue bags for the whites and the seemingly endless lines of washing on lines outside if fine, or up in the attics if wet...
When we lived in France the neighburs had only recently stopped doing the washing in the river...in the eighties!
Mother's mother remembered her mother explaining why you needed a trousseau...because the washing would be stored for months, awaiting a major washing day with professional washerwomen doing the work.
Just be grateful for the washing machine!
Fly, Imagine leaving the washing for a month! Washing in the river is quite something.
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