Picture the scene. (To use that well-worn cliché of a beginning, so beloved of television news reporters, who even have the advantage of images on a screen.) It’s Miss Ruthie’s day off today, and I am sitting, as I do every morning, waiting for the boys to emerge from their nocturnal slumber, in the common room, sipping my coffee and watching the Breakfast news. There are three laundry baskets in front of me, and I have been advised by Mrs C that ‘it’s towels and flannels’. (A statement which always has a whiff of the existential about it, I feel.) A (tall) Newtonian walks past me, gives me a grunt of acknowledgement, accompanied by a lovely smile, and collects the clothing he should have collected last night. On his return from the laundry, he looks at the laundry baskets, quizzically, and then looks at me.
‘Towels and flannels’, I explain.
He points at the individual laundry baskets and says,
‘Towels, flannels, and …. ?
He echoes what I’ve been thinking. Towels, flannels and what else?
Realising that I have to think of a sensible answer, I say that towels go in the baskets on either side of the one in the middle, and flannels go in the centre basket. He seems happy with this response and he returns to his dorm.
Another Newtonian arrives. He, too, looks quizzically at three baskets for two items. By now I have revised my former thinking.
‘Towels in the one on the right, flannels in the left and the other one is for when the ….. erm … ‘
He, too, seems happy with this, though somewhat confused, so I revert to my original thinking, whereby the towels go in the right and left basket and the flannels go in the middle one’.
Enter the Obergrupenfurherine of Newton. (Sorry, Diana.)
‘Why three baskets for two items?’ I enquire, in all innocence and on behalf of my fellow males in the room. My other half gives me the look that suggests that she’s been married to an idiot for the past 29 years.
‘Towels and flannels go together. There are a lot of both, so we need three baskets.’
Ah. Now I get it. I think.