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The Tea Maker
Wash day blues
I admit that I tend to get things wrong. I think I was hard-wired at birth to mess up the simplest of tasks and, even if there are only two approaches known to science (right and wrong) I’ll pick the wrong one.
This morning, the sun was shining so my wife (AKA Senior Management) asked me to hang out the laundry, which I was happy to do. After all, how difficult can hanging out laundry be?
Be honest, does it matter if things are upside-down, back-to-front, inside-out or randomly positioned? The sun and breeze will still get to all the necessary parts and they’ll all be dry, which is surely the purpose of the exercise. Well, Senior Management took one look at my efforts and shook her head. She then stripped everything off the line and started again, insisting that I remain beside her as part of her newly devised Washline Education Programme.
I stood there taking mental notes of how shirts, trousers, socks and bras all have a very specific way of being pegged to a line, not to mention a specific place in the overall geometric structure of the final layout. When she’d finished, she simply walked off, leaving me standing there feeling bemused.
It’s not just laundry that has right and wrong approaches, it’s all manner of things. If I stir soup, I stir it anti-clockwise. This is wrong. It must be stirred in a clockwise direction. She can’t explain to me what nasty things might happen if I don’t stir it clockwise. She doesn’t need a reason. She’s Senior Management, therefore it’s clockwise or nothing. It’s one of those stances that you can’t really argue with.
Mowing the lawn is another one. I cut east to west then I turn and cut west to east. Every time I do this, the grass becomes shorter than it was before. But this too is wrong. Grass grows in a southerly direction and should therefore be cut north to south and south to north. I called a major lawn-mower manufacturer and, guess what? They agreed that north-south-north may make a difference, although not a significant one. Has anyone ever heard of that before now?
How do you make coffee? I use instant coffee, basically because I’m allergic to any other type and also because I’m a philistine but that’s another story. I put some coffee and milk in a cup, add boiling water, stir it and drink it. This is wrong. By all means put the coffee in the cup but NEVER add milk or cream until after you’ve added the water. “What difference can that possibly make?” I hear you ask. Well, don’t ask me, because I don’t know. And I don’t care… except when Senior Management is around.
The Tea Maker
PS: You can comment on this story by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll respond to your emails in next week’s column.
