Do you still think that way about me now?

This Monday, I like... ironing.


Image taken from the Lakeland website.


Confession: I am very lazy when it comes to housework. I only clean up the kitchen and make my bed because this is stuff that has to be done every day or it will be the end of civilisation as we know it. Anything that can be left for a while - laundry, hoovering, dusting, cleaning windows etc. - I am completely blind to. The number of times my mum has grumbled, "Did you not see that X was to do?" - no, Mum, I didn't, I was far too busy reading a book/watching TV/on the internet/indulging the fantasies in my head. I heartily dislike most household tasks too. Dusting? You have to move so many things in order to do it properly, and then you have to put them back again. Cleaning the bathroom? When you rinse out the brush, the cleaner gets washed away before it's done its job. My particular bugbear is hoovering, UGH, I cannot STAND hoovering!!!!

There is one chore, however, that I do enjoy: ironing. Maybe it's the precision of getting the seams lined up and the fabric laid out taut, which appeals to the perfectionist in me. Maybe it's the instantaneous satisfaction of seeing the creases disappear under a cloud of steam. Maybe it's the comforting heat, the soft sound of the steam or the soothing rhythm of pushing the iron back and forth. Maybe it's the knowledge that this is the very last task to be done with these clothes, the end of the laundry sequence. Maybe it's the fact that I can sit down to do it! Whatever the reason, I could spend whole evenings happily ironing away.

And my particular favourite garment of all to iron? Shirts. Yes, shirts. I flatter myself that I'm something of an expert at them and I always save them for the end of any ironing session. To iron a shirt you have to treat it as five different bits: collar, arms, front right panel, front left panel, and back panel. A lot of people find this frustrating but I enjoy the routine of it, and the satisfaction of working around those awkward seams and folds to produce a flawlessly pressed shirt. If anything, I am over-fussy about shirts and will spend a lot of time making sure that I'm happy with the final result.

And lastly, doing the ironing gets me out of doing the hated hoovering. My mum hates ironing but loves hoovering, so she's more than happy to swap chores. The work gets done, neither of us has to do a chore we hate: everybody wins! :DDD

This Monday, I like... Latin.


Image scanned from Ecce Romani 1: Meeting the Family (2nd ed, Oliver & Boyd : 1982), copyright the Scottish Classics Group, illustrations by Peter Dennis, Trevor Parkin and Hamish Gordon. Used without permission, not for profit and with no intention to impinge on anybody else's legal rights. Please don't sue me!


Socially, secondary school* was not a good time for me; suffice to say I had a very big culture shock upon starting which drove a wedge between my contemporaries and me. But oh! how I loved the work! And amongst the standard English, maths, etc., there was my new favourite subject: the dead language of an ancient empire.

It started with my first lesson and the picture above. It accompanied a short and not-terribly-exciting paragraph about a Roman girl called Cornelia sitting under a tree and her best friend Flavia, who was singing for no particular reason. Having translated the paragraph with just a handful of vocabulary, and no clue yet about things like cases, participles or conjugations, we then answered some comprehension questions written in Latin: simple stuff which only required us to either copy directly from the paragraph or swap a few words around. But then our teacher added a question of her own, which she told us to answer in Latin: "ubi est Flavia?" - where is Flavia?

Most people went with "Flavia est sub arbore" - Flavia is under the tree - although the paragraph never specified that Flavia was under the tree, just Cornelia, and in the picture she seems to standing a little distance out. Others gave a more sweeping answer: "Flavia est in Italia" - you can translate that one for yourselves - but it seemed too general for me. A few went with the plain wrong: "Flavia est in (vicina) villa" - Flavia is in the (neighbouring) villa - certainly the paragraph said that was where she lived, but that wasn't where she was.

Then I saw it, right there in plain sight: "ecce! in pictura est puella, nomine Cornelia. ...etiam in pictura est altera puella, nomine Flavia."

So that was my answer: "Flavia est in pictura" - Flavia is in the picture. And I was hooked.

I always knew it was an impractical subject that would never get me anywhere. The "transferable skills" they tried to sell us about problem-solving skills, methodical reasoning, data analysis and verbal comprehension, were the same you could supposedly get from every other subject on the curriculum. At each major examination stage - GCSE, A-level, undergraduate degree - I considered giving it up. But I just enjoyed it too much! Only when I reached postgraduate level and could pursue only one subject, did I finally let it go, first for the Creative Writing MA and then the nightmarish PhD. (And that's how I ended up with the most unemployable set of qualifications ever!)

As to why I liked it, that's harder to say. I had a talent for it, sure, that helped. I have an interest in classical mythology and history. Having always loved English, learning about grammar in greater, systematic depth was fascinating. Translation was like the best word puzzle ever, and prose composition - turning English into Latin - was the best word puzzle squared. :D Looking back, I suspect that it helped that it was a purely written language. I always hated French orals - no such problem in Latin!

Of course, my knowledge these days is extremely rusty; I doubt I could translate any real Roman text without taking a refresher course first, and I certainly couldn't do any prose composition. But I will always look back on the subject - and on Flavia - with great fondness.





* Secondary school: the second level of formal education in the UK, from ages 11 to at least 16, at which age you can choose to leave education altogether. Here in Northern Ireland, however, most secondary schools will include students up to 18.

( Interests meme )

Woohoo! I'm rare, me!

Does that mean I have to go on an endangered species list and get official government protection? XD

I also did that handwriting meme thing but I'll post it some other time.

I just lost one of my unique interests :(

I feel like a part of me has been violated.