LANCING THE BOIL

Hello

Well, I've finally got round to writing another edition of The Autolycan; the long awaited - if only by me - story about kettles.  And other things.  I'd like to dedicate this one to a dear friend in Chester who is struggling with cancer, not that I think you are or ever were guilty of the behaviour described here!  Then again, somebody obviously is.........

Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might like it.

LANCING THE BOIL

In an odd sort of way you're reading this, if anyone actually is, because of a small town called Goole in the East Riding of Yorkshire. If you don't know Goole, you're in pretty good company. Described even by the local tourist people as 'sleepy', it probably won't push the likes of New York, the Taj Mahal or Uluru down your bucket list. Nowhere that cites two water towers as its main attraction is likely to. It's held a fascination for me though, ever since some hapless junior reporter straight from university on our local paper was given the job of finding small 'filler' items to fill the bottom inch or so of a column. I guess the brief was to try to make this look intentional - not as though the more experienced journalist who had written the article above could no longer spin it out for yet another sentence or two. I like to think of this raw young lad – let's call him Trev, or Trainee Reporter Ex-Varsity – poised like a coiled spring awaiting the call for, say, an inch and a bit at the bottom of Page 7 Column 4, whereupon he would immediately put a call in to Goole's hospital because he knew that there was a constant stream of incautious or clumsy local residents who would be limping through A and E. None of them though, had ever been incautious or clumsy enough to be detained. Thus, under the headline 'Goole Mishap', we learned that a Goole woman 'gashed her foot when she trod on a broken teapot' and met another who had 'injured an ankle falling over a low wall.' Several fell off bikes, and in one particularly nasty incident an eight year old faller 'injured her finger.'

I don't suppose I'll ever know if Trev's devotion to small misadventures which didn't require hospital admission propelled him to be one half of a new Woodward and Bernstein, but ever since he broke stories like 'Goole man in Lassa Fever Scare' (predictably, he didn't have it) along with blockbusters like 'Bottle of Ketchup Thrown at Goole Window' I have harboured a fascination for quirky items of this sort, which is how I now come to inflict editions of The Autolycan on you every so often. Trev doesn't know it, but I have secretly tracked his career ever since the heady Goole days. He did a stint on the Kent and Sussex Courier where he was entrusted with bigger stories like 'Mayor is Too Fat to Skydive', and cut his teeth on reporting local disasters. 'Whitstable Mum in Custard Shortage' would have been one of his. He should, of course have collared the fat Mayor to see what he knew about the missing custard, but instead chose to go with an ill-advised jest about the Mum being dis-custard. This earned him a rebuke from the editor, but he nevertheless made it to the national press, starting with The Guardian. We now learnt that 'Kangaroo Flatulence Research Points to New Climate Change Strategy for Farmers' – promising, but he again failed to follow up properly. We all searched in vain for tips about exactly how you research kangaroo flatulence – no, please don't speculate - but worse was to come when he fell foul of his Guardian bosses for 'Was Margaret Thatcher Really the First Spice Girl?' Scary, I should think.

But Trev's career has really taken off since he joined The Independent where he now has free rein to run with pretty much anything he likes. Recently he has given connoisseurs like me nuggets such as 'There Are Too Many Studies, New Study Finds', 'Emergency Biscuits Flown in Due to National Shortage' and the frankly bizarre 'Australian sheep farmer faces complaint from PETA that he swore at his animals.' ('None of them actually told me they were offended' he is reported as saying, presumably with expletives deleted.)

Coming up to date though, Trev is no longer quite so hapless. Recently he has unearthed a couple of real gems to take him to the pinnacle of his curious trade. First we had 'Parrot refuses help from firefighters with foul mouthed response'. Firefighters were apparently called to rescue it from a roof where it was quite happy, and after initially telling them 'I love you' it swore at them and flapped off in disgust. Parrot 1, Firefighters 0.

But he has now set the standard so high that others can only marvel in his shadow and gaze up in awe at the master. If there is a national award for these things, I want him to get it for 'Do Not Boil Your Underwear in Hotel Kettles, Warns Expert.' And if that's not mind-boggling enough, the said expert then goes on to warn that the practice is 'super, super, super, super gross.'

I like to think that the readership for this blog, whilst not large, is refined and decorous. Quality rather than quantity. I do hope that it's never occurred to you to run into a hotel room, strip off your underpants or other gender-appropriate garment, pop them in the kettle and bring them to a fast boil. I'm sorry if you now have an image in your head of what the previous occupant of your room might have been up to – it's probably one of those images that once seen cannot be unseen. Tell yourself that the story might have been put about by travel kettle manufactures eager for your business. Convinced? Oh well, I'm afraid it's the best I can do.

In the interests of scientific research I checked the capacity of the kettle in the last hotel I stayed in – 0.8 litres, about enough for two decent-sized mugs of tea. Of course, that capacity will be significantly reduced by the time you've got your smalls in, so there won't be much water in there at all. Even a little mini-washer uses about eight gallons per wash, around 40 times as much as my hotel kettle, so I can't see the wash being very effective, although I guess our expert is not sounding the alarm because the unseemly practice simply won't work very well. Or perhaps she's worried about the temperature of the wash. If you were to strip off your underwear now and hunt around for that crumpled little label packed with incomprehensible symbols you'll find something which looks like a bucket but is supposed to resemble a washing machine. (Oh, sorry, perhaps I should have pointed out earlier that you shouldn't follow this advice if you're reading this on the bus. Well, could you try showing him this article and saying I told you to? Yes, I can see it must be embarrassing to be thrown off the bus with next to nothing on, but no doubt he's thrown your clothes out as well? No? Oh I am sorry.) Anyway, the bucket-lookalike will have a number in it, probably 40, telling you what temperature the garment likes to be washed at. Any higher and your bits and pieces will presumably start to disintegrate into a kind of soggy pulp, not the sort of thing you want to be faced with when your other half decides it's your turn to get out of bed and make the tea.

I hope Trev has learnt from his mistakes and realises that this story cries out for an in-depth follow up. I hope he's banging on the Feature Editor's door every day until he gets his big break. I want to know more about the expert and how she trained for her position. Is there a Faculty of Hotel Kettles somewhere which offers a course in Boiling Underwear? Or has she done a first degree in Boiling Underwear in Kettles and then gone on to a Master's applying the general principles to the unique circumstances of hotels? When I was involved in careers guidance some years ago I wasn't aware of such a career path but I suppose you do get a bit out of touch in retirement. I also want to know more about the Boilers themselves – who are they? Are they profiled by age, gender, ethnicity? Do they think there's nothing to worry about, that it's all perfectly OK? Do they have a collective voice to put forward counter arguments? A Society of Underwear Boilers?

It gets more intriguing. Does the SUB have an Annual Conference? Do they meet in a hotel?

If you've ever been suspicious of what goes on in hotel bedrooms after the bar closes and conference delegates – temporarily free from the constraints of home life and rapidly losing any inhibitions they may have started the evening with – wend their slightly unsteady way upstairs - well, now you know. You perhaps thought that there would be steamy scenes after all manner of undergarments were removed and it seems you may well be right. 'Experts' will then be close at hand to wring the aforementioned hands while the boilers themselves wring out bras, boxers and briefs. Don't just simmer with rage at this, but instead rely on Trev – consummate professional that he now is - to cover this seething potboiler of a story. Trev's grown up. Goole and its grazed knees and flying ketchup bottles are now someone else's domain. Trev's moved on. He's now a Top Reporter Exposing Vice. He's lancing the boil.

_________________________________________________________________________