I am just back from the halls. I took a brisk shuffle there and back as it is very cold. I wrapped up warm, with winter coat, woolly hat, thick scarf and gloves. But the basket was bare! So someone yesterday must have thought I had forgotten I was on the rota and took them!
This is not good enough! I planned to wash the tea towels this morning with Glowhite - what else! - and iron them this evening.
Now, I fear, we could have tea towels at the Christmas Market that are not ironed! For few folk that I know iron their tea towels - which is a great shame as standards are standards, as My Old Mum used to say, as she wheeled out the mangle from the garden shed on Monday mornings, whipped the frost from the rollers, and led me by the collar to turn the handle. My frosted hands (wearing mittens without fingers, I would have you know) would then help hang the washing on the line - and take it all down and put the mangle away later in the day, as dusk came down, often with heavy snow and a biting wind before going indoors to a bowl of gruel (whatever that was) or tripe and onions, if there was an ‘R' in the month. Those were the days! And in wartime (and do not ask which war!) I would be sent off to look for fallen shrapnel for which my elder brother found a market, but I never saw any of the cash!
I have a few tea towels of my own to wash so I will not be denied the pleasure of this task - and they will be ironed this evening.
