Sunday, February 06, 2011

Square peg

The other day, hanging some clothes out on the balcony, I mused to myself about the clothes peg: what a simple, yet effective object it is, which in essence hasn't changed for hundreds of years (although life was clearly improved by the invention of the spring-loaded version by David M. Smith of Vermont in 1853). In a flash, the simple act of pegging clothes out to dry connected me with centuries of human beings, and in my own memory, with my younger self, hanging clothes out on a line strung between trees, most now tragically cut down, next to the cottage where I grew up (hoping against hope they'd be dry in time to wear); with a woman glimpsed from a Berlin-bound train in East Germany in 1986, who paused to look up from her wet sheets as we flashed by her green hillside; with, for some reason, and fancifully, pre-Revolution French washerwomen hanging Madame's couture gowns in Paris apartments and Edinburgh housewives draping bloomers over the narrow streets of the Canongate; and finally, and according to Wikipedia, "the little person one drags around in Google Maps" who is called "pegman" because he is shaped like a clothespeg.

There's something so wonderful about freshly-washed, fresh-air-dried clothes: begone the dull, environmentally-unfriendly convenience of the clothes-dryer! Give me a clothes peg and a washing line any day of the week.

5 comments:

nmj said...

Love this post. Freshly dried sheets are up there with the smell of fresh coffee. It is mostly raining here so laundry ends up draped on radiators. I would love a giant clothes horse that took it all! I recall in the USA - where dryers reign supreme - they had not heard of clothes horses and I could not buy one for love nor money.

LottieP said...

Yes! My fantasy perfume house has "freshly dried sheets" alongside "woodshed" and "road after rain"...

Anonymous said...

Ah, a girl after me own heart......It is a singular pleasure, hanging out clothes on a sunny, blowy day. Putting them on the pulley in the kitchen (do they have pulleys in the USA?) just isn't the same. I have never used a tumble drier.

chris said...

Dear Charlotte,
Yes, I love it too, & regret the demise of our Carousel,& now use the pulley. Its main advantage is its reliability above the Raeburn that's continaully lit!
Incidently I was very sad to see Robin's Chestnut tree was felled last week ie with his swing attached.
I'm enjoying your 'spy'blogs. Do you ever have camera shy victims?

LottieP said...

Anonymous (is that you, Marg?), as nmj suggests, I think they just have tumble dryers.

Chris - I do get knocked back on occasion; I tend to zero in on people who are reserved because I find them more interesting, so it's inevitable that some of them refuse.