Irony

Ironing is one of those chores which I don’t really mind once I get started, but it’s the thought of it which puts me off… and puts me off… and puts me off until there is a mountain not a pile of it to do. I have a cousin who is an ironing fiend, and her board comes out of the cupboard almost every day and she whistles through the basket of clothes. One thing I notice, is that her way of ironing is different from mine, and maybe we both inherited our ‘styles’ from our mothers.

My mum had a wooden ironing board, as most people did then, and a heavy electric iron which I think must have been quite modern for the time because you could adjust the temperature. She would let me iron the tea towels and handkerchiefs and I always folded them into ridiculous shapes – I think of that now as I iron my son’s hankies! I know some people think it is a waste of time ironing tea towels but my mum always thought they dried dishes better when they had been ironed.

We all hate nylon sheets and shirts, but they were such a boon before the days of tumble dryers – not only did they dry very quickly but they didn’t need ironing. Ironing cotton sheets was a real chore in those days – but think how much worse it was for grandmothers who had to heat their flat irons by the fire or on the stove.

I too have a wooden ironing board and it is an extra long and wide one as my husband is very tall so all his clothes are very big. I iron in the front room, so I can look down the road and see what’s going on and I also have the TV on, watching some easy-viewing programme. I always associate ironing with ‘The Killing’; I had a basket full to do, and was standing, iron in hand, flicking through the channels when I came to the start of the first episode of ‘The Killing’… two hours later I was still standing there, iron in hand, and not a single item ironed!

The word ‘irony’ has been used in its modern sense for over five hundred years from the Latin word ‘ironia’, which in turn came from the Greek ‘eironeia’, meaning ‘dissimulation or assumed ignorance’;it’s possibly related to the verb ‘eirein’ –  ‘to speak’. There was at one time the word ‘irony’ used to describe something made of iron! Iron in the metallic sense is an Old English word meaning metal or a sword made from metal; there are roots going right back to very early languages with the sense of being powerful or strong and even sacred… Sacred ironing… hmmm… off to the laundry basket!