Monday - washday

Do other families still keep to these old traditions? Monday is wash day. Tuesday, tomorrow, will be fish day - because the fish van comes round (and something will be bought for the real fish day, Friday, as well). I'm not quite sure how to explain the drying on the clothes line - I'm sure my parents' washing machine does drying as well - or maybe it doesn't? - but this is either because freshly aired and sunned clothes smell better, or because my father's eco-sensibility is strong. Paper, cartons, cans, bottles, bits of plastic - this is the most recycling conscious household I know, with everything neatly sorted into its right kind of container.

I do, though, find the drying clothes poignant as well as worthy - my father's cotton vest (aka singlet), the nearly threadbare towels. It's been a good day for textiles - I went to the Quilts exhibition at the V&A - and among many recent and imaginative examples was a deep indigo quilt made by Jane Whiteley in 2009, called Sides to the Middle, Fingers to the Bone - looking back to the time when old worn sheets were cut in two and resewn, with the former outer edges now on the inside. In Whiteley's piece, the impresses caused by bodies are signaled through red stitching. It's a long time since I've encountered one of those reworked pieces of linen, with a slightly lumpy seam up the center - probably one of the earliest forms of careful recycling that I knew.