my basket collection

The lovely hot and windy weather is ideal for drying washing. I loaded the line to it's limit and then stripped it bared and loaded it again. Everything but the thickest towels were dry, off and in the basket in the 20 minutes it took for the next load to be done. Brilliant. Washing all up to date.

Then comes the problem.

Having ruthlessly sorted through everything, folded and put to the bottom of the pile any item that I can vaguely get away with not ironing, I am still left with a mammoth amount. Two full baskets of shirts, trousers, frocks, hankies and tablecloths. Add to that the other basket of un-ironed stuff I hid in the study and the pile is past mammoth. It's Himalayan!

It was time.

It's not like I never do ironing. I do. It's just that I do it as rarely as possible. I will dig a frock out of the bottom of the basket 10 minutes before going out and give it a quick press with the iron already hot from M doing the same to his shirt. Random ironing and hanging of mass clothes in the wardrobe is a rare and special event but it is not unknown.

I woke up this morning already behind the eight ball (as a matter of interest, what the hell does that actually mean?) I had slept poorly (bless those bloody hot flushes and itches) and it was nearly 8 when I emerged. And there, sitting accusingly in my lounge-room, were those three overflowing baskets.

They stared at me while I ate breakfast and when I fed the fish. They glared when I shuffled off to the shower. They were still there, lurking, when I put the stereo on.

Sigh

I caved.

I went and got a bundle of coat-hangers out of the wardrobe. I collected the iron from the laundry (covered in dust) (the iron, not the laundry). I got the ironing-board out of the study (and brushed off the accumulation of cat hair that Skank had left after sleeping on it). I set it all up in front of the telly, tuned into Silent Witness, filled the iron and turned it on.

Then my mate walked through my back door.

Visitor.

A reprieve.

After nearly 7 hours of weeping, sobbing, yelling, silent misery and kicking of my lemon tree, I think we got her angst sorted (god I'd love to wring that man's bloody neck).

It was better than doing the ironing.