You'd better watch out because the extreme ironers are bound
to be coming to an Island near us this summer! I don't mean
people with an advanced level of sarcasm. These people
carry their creased shirts and, for all I know, their freshly laundered underpants
with them wherever they go and they mean sharp business. Vedra?
No problem. If necessary, they'll surf out there on their lightweight ironing
boards with their Morphy Richards travel iron tied around their waist. The
Chapel at the top of Mount Atalaya? A mere cockstride for these noble seekers
after wrinkle-free Wranglers. Now me, I get my eighty-two-year-old
mother to do my ironing. Why, only last weekend she knocked off eleven shirts
in the time it takes to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Or was it the Forsyte
Saga? But this craze, started by two rock-climbing lads
from Leicestershire (they're known as "Steam" and "Spray")
has so far taken in the Pyrenees and Scotland's Old Man of Hoy. The
beauty of this fresh sport is that you finish up looking fit for a wedding with
not a starched collar out of place, unlike, say, a marathon runner trying to find
his way back to the Commonwealth Games stadium in the back streets of Manchester. I'm
sure somebody will cotton on to this novel sport and figure out a way of making
money out of it. You can be photographed ironing on the
London Eye or in Madame Tussaud's, but it's not the same as having risked life
and limb to get to your chosen ironing site which could even be atop the Shouting
Man in San Antonio. How about inside the egg on the roundabout? Or while dancing
in Es Paradis? Or in the back of the goal at the Old Trafford Stretford End? Germans
have been trying to hijack the sport with all the enthusiasm they apply to securing
places around the hotel pool. They've been at it whilst snorkelling. For
myself, I prefer the method of boiling potatoes in a modicum of water which you
stir with a large soup spoon whilst wearing the unironed shirt. You then rub the
hot spoon up and down your chest, which has the advantage of applying starch as
well as vigour. p.s. I was going to write about Bob Dylan
this week, after seeing him whine and growl and c-r-o-a-k his way through two
hours of nasal nostalgia. But I think we've all read enough about his never-ending
tour and anyway he never buys a tee shirt emblazoned with ibizaiistoryculture.com.
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