Slightly Bemused: Hot Off The Press

Slightly’s towels – folded with care and precision

Slightly Bemused writes:

Over the weekend I managed something that in ways has been months in the coming. After Little Slightly left, I retook control of the front bedroom, which had always been my preferred. I used the back one as I had purchased a new mattress, and did not want to risk getting too many dust mites in it, as she is allergic.

So I moved back up front, stripping the bed of the sheets used during her stay and transferring those of mine from the back. Don’t worry, they got a wash, but such is the power of a washer/dryer and the upstairs rail of a bannister they were dry the same day. And the extra time allowed the mattress to breathe, for which I was glad.

The duvet cover, my favourite, I bought in Michael Guiney’s on Talbot Street the first day I moved into my own apartment, and is older than Little Slightly by a goodly margin. Well, bedsit, but my own space for all that. Its welcome embrace allowed me to sleep well on the new mattress.

Over the following months, I have been slowly picking up after Little’s stay. I found some things that needed to be sent over, but many that she asked me to hold on to for the next time. Even typing that ‘for the next time’ makes my heart soar. But laziness and sentimentality made me slow, and I must admit it was a hard day when I took her bathroom items out of the shower, off the windowsill, and from the ledge of the basin to put in a big plastic box to await her return. The bathroom seemed bare with just my soap, shower gel, and tooth brush and paste.

One of the fun bits though has been collecting up the Kinder Egg toys. Since she was a really little one, I would bring her Kinder Eggs, illegal in the US, and she loved them. While other Kinder products were available, she loved the eggs and the toys inside. And here, she discovered giant Kinder Eggs! So the little figurines and crocodiles and other shapes are dotted about the house. I have a small tub just for them, and every time I find one I grin before putting it on the stairs for the next time I go up.

But finally, over the weekend just gone, I found all of my own clothes, all my towels and had a major washing day. Everything that was not already (as some was packed away to clear space for Little Slightly in the main wardrobe) was cleaned and eventually only the clothes I stood in and the hand towels in use were not cleaned.

Anyway, over the weekend, all bar the clothes on my self and my bed were washed, what needs to be was set aside for ironing, the rest folded and put away, first in the hot press, before finally retaking their homes in my front wardrobe and drawers

I found an item  (above centre) definitely not mine, and I honestly do not know what to call it. With cups for boobs that a few years ago would have fit me (thank god I am losing fat), it is black with golden eyelets down the centre of the breast and a string to pull everything together. Perhaps a modern corset? Either way I was informed there is no need to send it home, it can stay until she returns, so it currently resides on the rail between my shirts and my trousers. For decorum, the cups face the shirts.

So with the clothes gone from the hot press, I was folding the last of the towels before I realised something. I am still folding them the way I was taught when I was six years old. The same way I was told to do it when I started first aid and later volunteer ambulance duty. It takes just three folds, and you are done, and if put right, your towels stack neatly. The same method is used for sheets, blankets, pillow cases – anything roughly rectangular. Square terry nappies were a bit of a challenge, but the same principle applies. Fold along any side first, then fold along the long side.

What you do is you hold the item (I will stick with towel) by two corners along the long edge, allowing it to fall. Fold together and make sure the edges line up and the fold is crisp. Now the long side is perpendicular to the original, so you fold again, settling the towel to be neat and straight. Usually the third fold, now again at 90 degrees to the last, should be the final fold.

This leaves you with a towel with one full fold on one edge, a double fold on one side, and the tailings, as my Dad would call them, on the other two sides. To stack them, you put them so the single fold is to the outside, and the double to the right. You stack largest (bath, beach, etc) together, hand towels together, and if you have them, face cloths atop the hand towels.

We only had a small hot press, and the nappies, bedsheets, and our clothes had to fit too. And you always took the bottom towel, the large fold allowing one hand easy access to lift the others while the second hand withdrew the base holder. This allowed for a sort of natural rotation of towels.

Pillow cases have a knack to them, too. Folded the same way, it is how you put them on the pillow. For this, I assume a normal pillow, not a special shaped one for neck support, as I use. Normal pillow cases are broadly the same: a tube of material big enough to fit around and along a pillow. One of the open sides has a flap into which the end of the pillow is tucked. There are what my mother called hospital pillows and what we at the time used on our ambulances, long cases many inches longer than the pillow, but with no flap. These had a special way of tucking the extra length back in on itself around the end of the pillow.

The pillow was then placed on the bed or gurney, open end away from the door, and flap uppermost. A double bed had open ends facing each other in the centre. Next time you are lucky, check your hotel rooms, they should be the same. Regrettably, we did not put chocolates on our gurneys.

The result of this was you could easily count how many blankets and sheets and pillow cases you have. In our ambulances, these were normally kept in the cupboard above the driver’s cabin. In a recent ambulance trip, I was amused to note the NAS ambulances do the same.

In the photo of my hot press (top), I have pulled my bath towels out so as so show what I mean. The single fold allows you to count how many towels are there, the line-up of the double fold believe it or not makes it much easier (at least as a right-handed man) to shake open the towel for use, or the sheet or blanket for spreading on the bed or gurney, without letting an edge drop to the floor, even for short people like me.

In the photo, the light green towel third from the bottom is my first towel, bought for me at six years old. When I was four, a new swimming pool, Glenalbyn, opened close to my school. They had an offer for the first month for £20 (a princely sum in that day) you could get life membership for your family. I think they were taken aback when my Dad rocked up with us all. We numbered eight at the time – my next younger brother was not yet born, but due in a few months.

I recently found that membership card, and years ago when staying briefly with my aunt in Mount Merrion, I popped along to chance my hand. Willing to pay if the card was not recognised, it turned out not to be necessary, I presented it, and the receptionist checked her book. She had a computer, but this was older, so they just kept the original enrollment book. Sure enough, there was my name, a confirmation question as to my address, and in I was allowed go.

I used my own swimming towel, one bought for each of us as Dad got fed up of there not being dry towels for his Saturday bath. In those days, we all trained early in the morning before school, and the damp towels remained in our bags all day until we got home. Saturday mornings were intensive training days. Each of us was given a different colour, and I got a then much darker green. But it was not folded.

For some reason when swimming, we would fold the towel along the lengthwise twice until we had this long, thin strip. A starter roll at the top, then in went the togs (I could manage Speedos then, today it would be a crime against humanity) and, if used, a swim cap), then the rest of the roll until a short, sausage shaped tube emerged.

When recently Little Slightly and I visited my sister (she of ‘the Nuala’ fame) she asked me to get the towels ready for her grandkids and Little Slightly and herself while she attended to other things. When she came back, six towel rolls poked out of the bag, and she started laughing. She had just meant me to put them into the bag, but so ingrained in me was it that a towel for swimming was tightly rolled.

So after resettling the towels, I looked up toward the bed linen shelf, and sighed. It seems someone cannot fold fitted sheets, and there is a neat underlayer of folded sheets and duvet covers, with a topping of scrunched up fitted sheets and at least one duvet cover.

But that is for another day. Today I am one hoopy frood who knows where his towels are, and which is the next one to be used for his shower.

Slightly Bemused‘s column appears here every Wednesday.

Pics by Slightly

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