Alan Pegs Out

When the weather is warm and sunny, wet clothes from the washing machine can be hung out to dry. My mother called it "pegging out" and she did it on Mondays. If the weather was unfavourable, she didn't peg out - instead she spread the damp clothes on a wooden frame she called a "clothes horse" which she opened up around the roaring coal fire in the dining room. Condensation caused by moisture evaporating from the drying clothes would stream down the inside of the windows and drip onto the floor, racing in matching patterns with the rain that streamed down the outside of the windows.

Sometimes my mother hung the clothes so close to the flames that they got scorched as they dried. That's why all my underpants had strange brown marks on them.

But whether she pegged out or whether she used the clothes horse, she did it only on Mondays. In Yorkshire, it is against the law to wash and dry the clothes on any day of the week except Monday. Yorkshire folk are deeply conservative and very suspicious of new-fangled ideas. Change is anathema in Yorkshire. My mother, ever the conformist, was scared that people might think her eccentric. So on Mondays she pegged out.

When Robin and I first moved into our house in Wellington, there was a twirly whirly framework in the back garden. A witch's hat sat on a pole and wires encircled it. Wet clothes that hung on the wires caught the breeze like sails and, if the conditions were right, the witch's hat spun in slow circles. Or not. Mostly not for it was old and creaky and its bearings had seized up.

"Oh, look," I said. "I can peg out."

"What a good idea," said Robin. "What's pegging out?"

I explained.

"But you go to work on Mondays," said Robin. "You won't have time to peg out."

"I have it all under control," I reassured her. "I'll peg out on Saturdays instead."

"They'll never let you go back to Yorkshire if you do that," Robin pointed out.

"I don't think I really care," I said. "There's nothing there for me any more. I've been away for so long now that I've even forgotten the words to the national anthem."

"God Save The Queen?"

"No - On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at."

"Ilkley Moor?"

"Baht 'at," I confirmed. "You can look it up on the internet. Mary Jane, worms, ducks and ritual cannibalism. Yorkshire folk have strange ways of passing the time..."

For a while, all went well. The Gods of Yorkshire failed to notice my ex-pat eccentricities and pegging out on Saturdays was a great success. But then, one day I hung a supersaturated solution of tee shirts on the contraption and the witch's hat, unable to take the strain, fell off its perch and shattered. Pegging out was no longer an option.

"What shall we do now?" I asked Robin.

"I'm not sure," she said. "Perhaps we should steamboat."

"Steamboat?"

"You know!" She struggled with the word for a while. "Headblock?"

"That's not quite right," I said. "Can you be a bit more precise?"

"Two syllables," she explained. "Means thinking hard. Earwig? No. Anyway, why do ears need artificial hairy extensions? That doesn't make any sense. All the very best ears are bald... I know! Brainstorm!"

"Yes!" I was enthusiastic. I went into the back room and picked up the favourite cardboard box belonging to Harpo The Cat, the one that is only half the size of his body. He sleeps in it so often that the corners have torn away and now it is perfectly flat. Nevertheless it still looms large in his affections. I placed it carefully in the middle of the lounge floor.

"What's that for?" asked Robin, puzzled.

"Whatever you do," I said, "don't stand in it while we think this problem through. We'll only be able to solve it if we think outside the box, rather than inside it."

"Of course," said Robin. "Harpo will kill us if we stand in his favourite box."

"Well, yes," I said, "that is a point worth taking into consideration. But it is a well known fact that all traces of rational thought vanish when you step inside the box. You must have noticed how stupid Harpo looks when he climbs in and falls asleep. Boxes collapse brain wave functions. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone?"

"Well, cats and physicists anyway. Don't step in the box. Now, about this pegging out. We have a problem to solve."

"Maybe we need to move the paradigm," said Robin.

"No, we can't do that," I protested. "Shifting a paradigm around is dangerous. People might not notice that we'd moved it and they'd trip over it in the middle of the night on their way to the toilet. Anyway, I like the paradigm where it is. I think it looks pretty, standing on its plinth."

"I've got the answer," said Robin. "It's really very simple. All we have to do is string a bottom line between the boundary fences at the end of the day. That will add a synergistic improvement to the pegging out experience going forward. Problem solved."

"You're a genius," I said. "See? Thinking outside the box always works." I put Harpo's box away again before he noticed that I'd moved it.

It wasn't long before I had the back garden criss-crossed with a tangle of plastic coated string. Spiders built webs that joined the tangles together giving them extended walkways on which they could bask in the sun while they sucked thoughtfully on a fly. Caterpillars festooned the lines with cocoons that swung in harmonic motion as the wind tickled their fancy. On sunny Saturdays I pegged out between the obstructions and the clothes soon dried.

And then one Saturday, while pegging out as usual, I turned away from the line to pick up something moist and squidgy from the basket. When I looked up again the tangle of lines had broken and there was washing all over the lawn. The constant friction between the sections of my complex construction had finally worn through one line and it had collapsed under the strain of my underwear. Who wouldn't?

I retrieved the fallen garments. They were covered in grass clippings and seeds. New Zealand seeds all come equipped with velcro-like hooks and they latch firmly on to any passing surface. Cats, tee shirts, knickers and bras - seeds don't care, they just like to hang on to stuff and never let go. Washing the clothes again would take care of the grass clippings, but all the seeds had to be removed one by one by hand. There had been a dozen things hanging on the line when it collapsed and each one had more than a hundred seeds firmly attached. I counted them all...

The Gods of Yorkshire are not mocked. Pegging out only works properly on Monday. Doing it on Saturday sows the seeds of destruction.