by Charlotte Phillips (Mon Feb 01, 2010)
‘How's yours?' I ask my friend Wendy, as we compare notes over a coffee.
‘OK. Except for this.' She lifts a corner of her blouse to show me a
small but vicious burn on her stomach.
‘It happened again?' I say, incredulous.
‘Yes. Just like last time. Everything had been fine. It was a normal
Sunday evening. Suddenly, from nowhere, this awful eruption.'
They're strong, masterful and capable of inflicting pain and pleasure in
equal measure.
But don't get the wrong idea. We're not talking about men. Wendy, like
me, is locked in an abusive relationship with an industrial strength pressurised
steam iron.
Our husbands wouldn't dream of treating us the way our irons do. They'd
end up in court if they did.
Our irons, though, have no such qualms.
My first did things the manufacturers swore were an impossibility. Its
favourite trick was to loosen the supposedly unlockable lock that guarded the
tank and then, suddenly, spit gusts of boiling water over me and as many of the
children as possible.
Foiled, it then worked loose the nuts securing the base plate in the
hopes of electrocuting me.
Wendy's - her third - has inflicted three burns on her and scalded her
twice.
And, even when not actively engaged in turning its sado-masochistic
fantasies into reality, a steam iron has one more favourite game.
It performs perfectly as you work through the clothes that don't matter:
the old rags that are ironed only to make them sufficiently compact for the
children to stuff them into the cracks and crevices in their rooms not already
filled with lolly sticks and fruit fly corpses.
Then, as you iron the one essential garment - new, white, pristine,
irreplaceable and required for an important and imminent meeting - it emits a hiss
of satisfaction and smears brown fingers of concentrated limescale all down the
front.
And forget that guff about treating it with calcium remover. Mine's so
dosed up on the stuff it's signed up with Calgon Users Anonymous.
But what worries me isn't our irons' behaviour. It's the way Wendy and I
react, laughing weakly and treating their lethal flaws as endearing eccentricities.
So a month ago we sat down and agreed new rules.
1. Iron ownership is not like being in a co-dependent relationship. It
just feels that way.
2. Needing our irons is one thing. Pathetic gratitude when they tackle three
sheets on the trot without burning us is quite another. Demeaning, too.
3. Irons that don't work properly should be repaired, not appeased.
Wendy, however, is in deep. Now, she's taken up the bassoon, an
instrument that compensates for having only one Mozart concerto to its name with
record-breaking homicidal tendencies.
‘Look at this,' she said on my last visit, pointing to a nasty looking
cut on her lip. ‘It's from the wire you wind round the reed you blow into. It
came loose and bit me.'
‘And the steam iron?' I say. ‘It blew up,' she said, then brightened.
‘The new one's in its box, just over there. It's a different manufacturer
this time. They've even given me a three year guarantee. But......' she gestures to
the ironing basket. ‘I have bought a brand new white shirt for that vital interview
with my daughter's headteacher tomorrow.'
From the steam iron's box, I swear I can hear a faint hissing, followed
by a small, cruel laugh of satisfaction.
