Monday 10 September 2012

Wash day blues

I have failed in my motherly duties!

Eldest bakes like a professional most of the time although she rarely cooks savoury food; but she can follow a recipe: she’ll be fine. And it’s catered accommodation anyway. She’ll not starve.
Last week we purchased a collapsing laundry bin. She is going to accumulate her own washing from now and have a go at sorting and laundering for herself. Apparently this will be “more fun” than doing the families laundry… I feel guilty that she doesn’t know the first thing about sorting, choosing the right programme, pegging out on the line or programming the tumble dryer; but more so that she thinks this might be fun.
I am a passionate sorter and a user of all the varied programmes on my washing machine. I get an immense satisfaction from smoothing and folding clean clothes. (Regular readers may remember that I do not iron.) But: fun?
We’ll see.

The photo is of Eldest's 18th birthday cake, by special request because "It's not fair, I never had a pink castle."

7 comments:

Only Me said...

It's a very lovely pink castle. Washing fun! Noooooo. We must arrange for a cuppa and a catch up very soon. Sx

Young at Heart said...

that cake is amazing and made me quite peckish..... my son has done his laundry for years and it delights me that he knows how to peg-out properly.....everything is pretty much black or white so only 2 piles to make and as he grew up with a non-ironing mother he can fold flat with the best of us!!

janicebotterill said...

when's the big day???? I like a bit of laundry myself but use the same programme for everything as I have no special fancy wotnots to subject to a spin cycle. I'm also secretly partial to a spot of ironing. I had a housemate once who used to buy cheapy clothes instead of laundering. We once took six bin bags of clothes to the laundrette for a service wash. Not good.

Curry Queen said...

Being able to bake well is a great gift and she will always be able to bribe others to cook for her with the promise of a cake or two...LOVE the pink castle. Definitely not showing your blog to my daughter or I know what the cries will be....!

libby said...

I too love pegging out clothes and then folding them....and that cake is quite something!

A Time for Stitching said...

I don't think you've failed at all. As a child I had to cook,clean and iron :-( and it wasn't much fun. Neither is it fun that I still have to do it. It's more of a novelty if you haven't had to do these things under duress, and consequently becomes mundane before you HAVE to do them.
Great cake btw - my daughter would love it and she's 27!
Teresa x

hausfrau said...

I made a pink castle cake for Youngest’s 4th birthday party. There were getting on for twenty little princesses with a few older sisters and parents to feed. It was made from a roasting tin of Victoria sponge and four bought Swiss rolls topped with inverted ice-cream cones and smothered in pink butter icing. Eldest’s needed to be on a whole different scale…
I made a small roasting tin of Victoria sponge (if only I owned a 6 inch square cake tin) and bought a pile of dolly mixtures. But I couldn’t decide how to do the towers and turrets. The answer is obvious, but it would have been good to think of it sooner: mini Swiss rolls! On special offer at the village shop they had sold out; I bought marzipan (something Eldest and I both eat like sweeties if there’s a packet open).
Let me tell you now that you need to buy the Swiss rolls – or make a dense fruitcake. Victoria sponge does not support the weight of marzipan, even spiked with cocktail sticks, and especially not in the heat of a summer’s day. The photo, taken when the cake was just finished, was a rare sighting of a complete castle!
But I thank you for your enthusiasm. And it did make everyone who saw it giggle.