24 Feb 2014. A GOOD SOAKING.
It took me a bit to come up with the idea, an hour on the internet, a couple of phone calls and a hundred mile round trip to Burslem in The Potteries but it was well worth it to just see the look on The Trouble’s face when she fished the dinner plate out of the kitchen sink.
For as long as I can remember my Nearest and Most Expensive has ‘soaked’ the crockery and cutlery before completing the washing up. And for longer than I care to remember I’ve been asking her not to do it: in my book there is nothing worse than going to the sink to wash my hands after completing some hand-soiling task and finding that I can’t because the sink is full of crockery. Another bone of contention is that the soaking water is usually so hot I can’t just go ahead and wash my hands in it anyway, or even express my annoyance by pulling the plug out before being forced to go upstairs to wash my hands in the bathroom sink. (Atkins’s solution to the problem, to piss in the sink, thus expressing my displeasure whilst at the same time cooling the water down so I stand a better chance of pulling the plug out, although appealing, lacked finesse, like most of his ideas.)
I have always wondered what The Trouble hopes to gain by this pot-soaking ritual. I can understand dirty clothes being soaked as the soapy water will permeate the material and assist in getting all the dirt out. But crockery and cutlery? You could soak them in a sink of soapy water until Kingdom Come and they would still remain as unpermeated as the day you put them in there.
I asked her once why she insisted on doing it. She said it wasn’t doing them any harm. I said it wasn’t doing them any good either. It didn’t make a scrap of difference, she still carried on doing it. Until, that is, I had the idea.
I had established from Mr Hartley, the man I spoke to at the ceramics factory in Burslem which manufactured our best dinner plates, that although they had ‘seconds’, which were available in the factory shop, they did not have ‘thirds’. Anything not good enough to be classed as a ‘second’ was broken up and discarded. I asked him if it was possible for me to purchase one of these plates. At first he demurred, citing ‘our reputation to think of’. However once I’d explained to him why I wanted it – and after he’d stopped laughing – he agreed, probably because his wife soaks the crockery too. I gave him the specific design of the plate and he promised to give me a call when he was able to fulfil my request. About a week later he called and the following day I picked it up. It proved to be perfect for purpose; when placed on a table not only did one side of it almost touch whilst the other side was about two inches in the air but in addition it developed a satisfying wobble at the slightest touch.
The Trouble not only soaks the crockery but, because she is somewhat lax when it comes to keeping on top of the washing up, invariably has many items to soak when she eventually gets round to it. Which means that as well as our every day dinner plates quite often some of our best dinner plates accompany them. Fortunately.
I waited until an ideal moment to put my plan into effect. It arrived a week last Friday. The Trouble soaked the crockery again. I established that two of our best plates were absent from our crockery cupboard and therefore in the sink. I poked about in the foam for a minute or two and found one of them. I donned The Trouble’s marigolds, fished it out and replaced it with the warped one. Then I dried the one I’d fished out, hid it on top of our bedroom wardrobe and settled back to wait.
Later that afternoon The Trouble started to wash the pots. While she did I hung around in the kitchen pretending to be weighing up whether it was due for a paint job. As I have already said, her face was a picture when she pulled out the warped plate. “What the….!” she said, obviously shaken.
“I thought you said soaking them wasn’t doing them any harm?” I said.
“It never has before.”
“Well it has now,” I said. I returned to examining the walls for possible re-decoration before saying, as though I’d just thought of it, “What a shame. And we’re having Atkins and Meg and the Brightmans for dinner next Saturday. Whatever will we do?”
I can report that the ruse worked perfectly and that The Trouble has stopped soaking the pots. However it isn’t all good news. At the dinner party guess who ended up with the warped plate?
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