Holding the little metal thing-o, wondering what I could possibly do with it, I recalled a television program I’d seen many (yes, many!) long years ago. I always iron in front of the tv. Somehow it makes the whole process easier, although I pine for the day when some woman inventor will come up with the ironing board, a tv screen right in front and a little conveyor belt thing that takes the newly ironed things away – preferably to the room to which they belong! In public I sometimes say ‘Oh, I always iron in front of the tv’, and people look at me strangely or, as if some big secret is being revealed, say ‘Oh, so do I’. That’s all six of us in Australia who still iron straight after doing the washing. Mostly the response I get is ‘Iron? I only iron as I need things’.
The television program was one of those panel programs, where impossibly groomed women with arched fine eyebrows, and ‘high’ hair that never moved, even when they whipped their head around to confront some other panellist who had just said something cleverer than them, and pointed sharp black fingernails, pontificated on viewer’s letters. I say black fingernails, because now when I think about it, I realise that the program was in black and white and the fingernails would have been bright scarlet. I was, after all, born in the first half of last century. I don’t know how you feel when you read that sentence, but it just about makes me fall off my chair and curl up into the foetal position.
The question to this particular panellist was from a viewer who wanted to know what you could do with, what you could make with, those little plastic clip thing-o’s that hold the top of the bread packet closed. ‘What?’ the panellist exclaimed, she of the impossibly high, impossibly stiff unmoveable hair, ‘Do with them? My dear, get a life!’
And that’s what I said to myself looking at the little metal disk that comes with every, every, packet of incense cones. Now what is someone who was born in the first half of last century doing with incense cones, I hear you ask. Well, I’ve always loved incense, it was the trendy thing to burn when I was young, and not to mask any other strange odours emanating from our bedrooms as I’ve heard mothers say these day – ‘Oh, I can’t bear the smell of that’, they say when they walk into my house – my lovely jasmine or musk or sandalwood incense burning – ‘It reminds me of when Junior was at home and trying to cover up all that other stuff that was going on in his bedroom’. No, I just love it. Its Asian, its exotic, its, well, its nice.
Recently I bought several – well, many if I’m honest – boxes of incense cones. Every perfume you could imagine – rose, opium, passion potion (haven’t tried that one yet, so I can’t report on it), frankincense and on and on – and I’ve been burning them on a several times a day basis. However, each box contains its own little metal disk on which to sit the cone while it burns. I put the cones in a little bowl, being a neat and tidy person who could not bear to have ash falling on my newly dusted surfaces. Yes, I’m one of the other six people in Australia who still dust. But I digress.
I’m also a fairly frugal soul, so the one disk will do me. Why soil another one, when I have one in use already. So I’m amassing these little shiny round metal disks. And so it occurred to me – if someone has gone to the trouble to make these, carefully dimpled to hold the cone, shouldn’t there at least be some use for them? But what? And so as I was thinking ‘What can I do with this little metal thing-o?’ when I remembered the lady with the immoveable hair. ‘Get a life’, I said to myself.
When my children were small (second half of last century) we used everything that came into the house to ‘make things’. We made things out of egg cartons, milk bottle tops, cigarette packets, cellophane, lolly wrappers, toothpicks, toilet roll middles, cereal boxes, cottonwool balls, everything. Now I have a grandson of my own, and we ‘make things’ too. I save things for him – and aren’t the things I save these days just so superior to those we had last century? Why just the other day I opened a new razor (yes, for me if you must know), and found the most wonderful – and most unnecessary – hologram type curling design on the plastic sleeve that enclosed it. Why, we – said grandson and me – can do something with that I thought, we can make some cunning little thing. And so I cut it out, carefully with my husband’s beard trimming scissors and put it aside with all the other things I’ve been saving – cute little moulded pudding containers, glue with sparkles in it, and all the other things that just scream out ‘Make something with me!’
Surely these little metal thing-o’s will be useful for something. But what – not for eyes, because nowadays you can buy eyes, with moveable black centres, and in all shapes and sizes. I thought perhaps I should just keep them, put them in a sealable sandwich bag and throw them in the cutlery drawer, handy. But then I envisaged what would happen – they’d sit there, no use forthcoming, and next time I spring cleaned – and yes, I spring, summer, autumn and winter spring clean, and sometime mid-season too, just like you other six people – they’d be relegated to a box of odds and ends for ‘just in case’. Now tidy as I am I do have a box of ‘just in case’s’, however its contents are in alphabetical order – so there!Then I imagined the next spring clean where they still hadn’t been used, and that’s when the great chucking out occurs. Now, I’ve read articles that say if you don’t use something for twelve months you should dispose of it. I love it! Dispose away, I say.
Things get chucked out – of course, three days later something needs repairing, or propping up, or something, and my handyman (not my husband) says, ‘Oh, you don’t have a little piece of wire, about so thick, and about so long, do you?’ and I check to see if the rubbish has been collected this week, because that’s where that piece of so thick, so long, wire is – in the rubbish bin.
Nevertheless, I will chuck these shiny and oh so useful looking metal thing-o’s out. I’m a tidy and organised soul. And should you ask me in a day or so, ‘Do you have a little round piece of metal, about so big, and shiny?’ I’ll just probably say to you, ’I don’t keep stuff like that. Really, get a life’.
© Nelma Ward
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