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After so many weeks of lockdown I think I’d like a bit of a rant, so look away now if you are of a nervous disposition, a phrase once used by careful announcers on TV. Even thinking about the telly makes me annoyed with its endless repeats of programmes I didn’t want to watch first time round. Period dramas are especially irritating with their too perfect costumes – not a zip in sight, never before worn, brand new condition – and the 21st century dialogue in them aggravates me more.
But the thing that really, really annoys me happens in the sad parts of post 16th century dramas. The heroine weeps copiously, and usually noisily; lots of tears and sobbing ensue and she wipes it all away with her hand, often both hands. It’s not a pretty sight and this would NOT have happened.
At the first sign of a tear Sarah or Elizabeth or Harriet or Jane, would have produced her neatly pressed pocket handkerchief from its convenient place up her sleeve or in a pocket and dabbed her eyes. She would have turned away and blown her nose discreetly. Does this happen – no! TV heroines in historical dramas sob and weep and sniff and gulp and then spread everything over their faces.
Young ladies had drawers full of hankies and would have been instructed since babyhood to use them. Sniffing was bad manners and frowned on, and ‘Use your handkerchief’ was a mantra drilled into girls and boys by mothers and nannies.
Decades ago when I was in the Infants class we had to hold up our clean handkerchiefs every day; some of them may not have been clean, but everyone had one, and standard navy-blue knickers even had a little pocket especially for that purpose. Paper hankies – tissues – to use a prissy-sounding word, had not been invented and it would have been considered ridiculous to blow one’s nose on a piece of paper and throw it away.
I am definitely in the cotton handkerchief brigade and at last I have the ecological movement to back me up; I could almost guarantee that tissues are a dirty word to Greta Thunberg! I am vindicated, validated and any other word beginning with V that you can think of.
However, not everyone in my household values handkerchiefs in this way …I have just watched my DH take the old FlyMo mowing machine out of the shed. It has been a considerable time since it was last used and I watched as he cleaned it. He did not use an old rag or duster, he cleaned it with his handkerchief.
I could have banged on the window but I didn’t. What would be the use? I have nagged in vain and his handkerchiefs are regularly used for purposes other than that intended: they clean car windows, windscreen wipers, secateurs, screens, shoes – the list is endless.
But they’re not paper tissues, so I may excuse him.
