In my last
post I discussed how God could grace the unworthy and show them how to find
water. John Gray, that rather charming
gay raconteur from Wales took time off from feeding his menagerie and left a
comment saying:
“catching
up with you tom is like reading about someone's life from the last century!”
Good
Lord. I never thought of it like that.
OK, I
will admit that where I live there is no electricity, no water, not even a
decent road. No school, no clinic and
the only shop is mine. At night, once
the generator is off, it gets bloody dark and you can hear all of God’s
wonderful beasties screeching in the jungle not fifty yards from my door. This morning I found a land crab hiding round
the back of the bog which can only be flushed with a bucket of water by the way
(the bog, not the land crab) and my dog was killed by a snake a couple of
months ago.
Imagine,
hours of darkness. No washing machine. No
hot water out of the shower. No shower
for that matter. Do people really, in
this day and age, wash out of a bucket?
How on
earth do we survive?
I
present to you the Hang Suei 2000. The
latest in green Chinese technology.
 |
| The Hang Suei 2000. $1.29 from Amazon. |
This
piece of equipment is issued to all Chinese officer’s batmen to ensure uniforms
are crisply pressed on every parade.
After its anticipated 300 year working life, it requires no special
handling during recycling. Not only does
it use a renewable energy source, it is cordless.
It is
so simple and convenient to use, it doesn’t even come with instructions. All the user has to do is place a few hot
charcoals into the specially designed combustion chamber and iron away!
 |
| Simply press on the tastefully cast brass cock (cockerel) to open |
 |
| Insert glowing charcoal in the computer aided designed combustion chamber, snap the lid closed and iron away. Well, not you of course, dear reader, this is what maids are for. |
 |
| Smooth ironing surface, perfect for linen suits |
 |
| Even a user friendly temperature control device |
One day soon I might persuade her to let me take them off first.
I have an old iron i use as a doorstop. In order to use that one, it has to be place on the hot stove and allowed to heat up first. The idea is you have several of these so you can pull one off the stove to iron, and when it cools, you place it back on the stove, and grab another that's hot. Lather, rinse, repeat.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind washing clothes, and have done plenty of handwashing in my day, but i've never liked ironing and am grateful for the modern fabrics that don't require it all that often.
"John Gray, that rather charming gay raconteur from Wales"
ReplyDeletefuck me, I've made it!
Back in the early sixties my parents were in Liverpool "on leave" from Nigeria. My godparents were showing off their new automatic washing machine. My father said that he had an automatic washing machine that washed, dried, ironed and put the clothes away.
ReplyDeleteThe maid might have used an iron like yours.
Your post about water brought back memories. My father brought all the drinking water home. It was used carefully and never thrown away. The tap water was used for washing up, but I remember a few times that it had to be boiled because of cholera outbreaks. When good water is so easily available at the turn of a tap it is hard to recognise what a precious resource it is.
I'm glad you didn't have to rescue the guys from the bottom of the well.
Good lord. Reading your blog does help me feel like I am living the life in belize.
ReplyDeleteThat iron is a prank, right?
Megan,
ReplyDeleteThis iron heats itself, well, the charcoal inside does, so I only need one. I hate ironing too which why we have a maid!
John of the Valleys,
The Gay Racanteur Award will foloow in the post.
Have you seen the Matt Cartoon in Today's Daily Telegraph? Hilarious!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
Churn Dash,
welcome, I hope you like the blog! You obviously know what it is like and that I am not exageerating! The well is the talk of the neighbourhood. There is, the builders tell me, a queue of people filling their water containers.
Miss San Pedro
Circumstance brought me to Angola but I would mush rather be building my place in Belize!
No, the iron is not a joke, that is the iron we use! Hey, it works..
If she irons your underwear while you wear them, does it make them hot pants?
ReplyDeleteA cock on a hot iron? Sounds like a terrible partnership to me.
ReplyDeleteI envy your unelectrified nights - so different from your days. Here in our electric homes we can almost pretend night isn't happening outside. Unnatural and not yet part of the human genetic make-up.
I knew Marcia and Claudia are one of a kind, if different colours: They know how to wield an iron on a guy in his (under)pants.
ReplyDeleteAllowing myself a moment of nostalgia: The oldest and only toy I have left of my childhood is an iron with the same red handle as yours. I could cry. However, whilst I admire the forethought of the hot coals, mine was only to be put on a hot stove - enough to iron my dolls' couture.
U
PS I love ironing - what I call the smoothing out of life's wrinkles
Ninja San,
ReplyDeleteUncomfortably hot, Sir.
Sir Pud,
Be careful what you wish for. If the UK economy continues its slide, you may be sitting in darkness sooner than you think!
Ursula,
YOU ironed your dolls clothes?!
I would have thought you would have been ripping their heads off.
You are always welcome to pop over and smooth my wrinkles out.
Your description of life off of the grid sounds like many parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, although with snow. I might add though, that generally it is by choice and not design! Love the iron, what a very clever item.
ReplyDelete