Of buttons and mandolines.
On Good Friday Eve I decided to make a Chinese meal. Duck with walnuts and stir fried vegetables, substituting beansprouts for noodles (My concession to dieting) I enjoy cooking Chinese food, but as most know the time-consuming part is preparation and clean up. Cooking and eating are all too quick, especially the latter.
Having laid out the ingredients, prepared a marinade, cubed the duck and prepared the sauces I turned to the vegetables. Spring onions (Scallions) and sweet peppers were quickly done. Sugar snap peas and baby sweet corn too. Then, I decided to add a little extra colour. Using a mandoline to finely slice carrots worked brilliantly until I finely sliced the side of my right thumb. It was not an injury that needed a visit to an emergency department, just a good wash some disinfectant and a plaster. The plaster quickly came off and I had to replace it with surgical tape.
The following morning I decided that fresh air was the best cure for my thumb and removed the tape. Huge mistake. Within a minute I'd caught it on something or other, and opened it up. Now securely taped up again, it was time to get dressed and start the day. But, then I was confronted with that age-old mystery. Men’s clothes are designed for the right-handed and, as buttons on their clothes are reversed, those for women are for the left-handed. In this respect I am both advantaged and disadvantaged.
I was born left handed. The Latin for left is “Sinistra” and in the 1940s, left-handedness was considered wicked and a sure sign of inherent criminality (I admit to having always enjoyed stealing apples!). I was forced to become right-handed and remember sitting in class with my left hand behind my back. Knuckles rapped with a wooden ruler quickly convinced me that I should become a righty. The fact that I wrote backwards and was dyslexic (mainly numerically) simply convinced everyone that my leftness was disruptive, and that I was deliberately taunting my teachers. I was five years old when this started, but the idea of criminal intent was so deeply entrenched that age was no excuse. And so I learned to do most things with my right hand, but secretly persisted in using my left too. I'm not fully ambidextrous, but I can manage right-handed clothes.
The reasons advanced for the difference in clothing are varied. A popular one is that men dressed themselves and women had servants. This begs the questions. What did the maidservants and the women who were neither rich nor servants wear? Nowhere can I find reference to, what I think is, the most obvious reason. Clothes with buttons and buttonholes first appeared in 13th century Germany. It was a world of religious certainty and Old Testament belief in sin and punishment. Women, like left-handed men were considered inherently wicked. Eve not only talked to snakes and ate apples, but shock horror, tempted poor dimwit Adam into following her example. Surely clothes that required women to be left-handed was a way of, daily, reminding the female of the species of their transgression? Not just reminding her, but through inconvenience, inflicting a penance too. As a wronged leftie I say, “Bring back equal opportunity button-less smocks.”
Saturday we went on our annual Bluebell visit. When I lived abroad, bluebells were high on the list of things I missed about England. These beautiful flowers have the most wonderful scent and form a carpet of blue in woodlands. Being among them is, I find, good for the soul and refreshes the spirit after winter.
Having laid out the ingredients, prepared a marinade, cubed the duck and prepared the sauces I turned to the vegetables. Spring onions (Scallions) and sweet peppers were quickly done. Sugar snap peas and baby sweet corn too. Then, I decided to add a little extra colour. Using a mandoline to finely slice carrots worked brilliantly until I finely sliced the side of my right thumb. It was not an injury that needed a visit to an emergency department, just a good wash some disinfectant and a plaster. The plaster quickly came off and I had to replace it with surgical tape.
The following morning I decided that fresh air was the best cure for my thumb and removed the tape. Huge mistake. Within a minute I'd caught it on something or other, and opened it up. Now securely taped up again, it was time to get dressed and start the day. But, then I was confronted with that age-old mystery. Men’s clothes are designed for the right-handed and, as buttons on their clothes are reversed, those for women are for the left-handed. In this respect I am both advantaged and disadvantaged.
I was born left handed. The Latin for left is “Sinistra” and in the 1940s, left-handedness was considered wicked and a sure sign of inherent criminality (I admit to having always enjoyed stealing apples!). I was forced to become right-handed and remember sitting in class with my left hand behind my back. Knuckles rapped with a wooden ruler quickly convinced me that I should become a righty. The fact that I wrote backwards and was dyslexic (mainly numerically) simply convinced everyone that my leftness was disruptive, and that I was deliberately taunting my teachers. I was five years old when this started, but the idea of criminal intent was so deeply entrenched that age was no excuse. And so I learned to do most things with my right hand, but secretly persisted in using my left too. I'm not fully ambidextrous, but I can manage right-handed clothes.
The reasons advanced for the difference in clothing are varied. A popular one is that men dressed themselves and women had servants. This begs the questions. What did the maidservants and the women who were neither rich nor servants wear? Nowhere can I find reference to, what I think is, the most obvious reason. Clothes with buttons and buttonholes first appeared in 13th century Germany. It was a world of religious certainty and Old Testament belief in sin and punishment. Women, like left-handed men were considered inherently wicked. Eve not only talked to snakes and ate apples, but shock horror, tempted poor dimwit Adam into following her example. Surely clothes that required women to be left-handed was a way of, daily, reminding the female of the species of their transgression? Not just reminding her, but through inconvenience, inflicting a penance too. As a wronged leftie I say, “Bring back equal opportunity button-less smocks.”
Saturday we went on our annual Bluebell visit. When I lived abroad, bluebells were high on the list of things I missed about England. These beautiful flowers have the most wonderful scent and form a carpet of blue in woodlands. Being among them is, I find, good for the soul and refreshes the spirit after winter.
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I hope your thumb is better x