Extreme ironing could put the passion into pressing
There is a fledgling sport known as extreme ironing where people take ironing boards, clothes and irons to perilous places – top of mountains, ski slopes, into a white water raft – and risk life and limb as, at the same time, they take the creases out of their tee-shirts.
According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt".
I mention this against the backdrop of recent comments from the self-styled Domestic Goddess, Kirstie Allsopp – presenter of Location, Location, Location – who opened a can of worms by claiming that women secretly love doing the ironing because it keeps them sane.
If positive mental health was a side-effect of ironing your clothes, I’d be a lot saner than I am now – because by default rather than any design on my part, I’m the principal ironing board operator in our house.
That said, the closest I’ve come to extreme ironing is trying to do shirt collars while watching football on the telly. It may not equate to scaling the Alps but it can still hurt when you burn your hand while not concentrating on the hazardous task at hand.
Kirstie – or to give her her proper title, the Honourable Kirstie Allsopp – believes that women secretly love doing chores like ironing and many find it soothing to do mundane tasks around the house.
“I’m absolutely convinced that those repetitive tasks that one does every day, organising and regularising one’s home, and keeping it tidy, is enormously therapeutic. I know it is for me, and I have many, many working mum friends who feel the same,” she said recently.
Let’s hope she’s more authentic than that other Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson, who was happy to bake all the Christmas cake you could imagine when the cameras were rolling – but then hired the caterers in to do the real thing when Yuletide actually came over the horizon.
The truth of the matter is that nobody likes ironing; it is boring, repetitive and never-ending. But if it isn’t done, then clothes multiply like rampant rabbits and take over the downstairs of your house.
That’s why it would be good if extreme ironing was more than a niche sport ... if it actually made it onto the list for the Olympics, for example.
Because then it would be seen as a manly pursuit, a dangerous hobby, a challenge as opposed to a chore.
Purists of the sport claim that it was started in 1997 in the English city of Leicester by resident Phil Shaw in his back garden. With ironing on the agenda but preferring the idea of an evening out rock climbing, he decided to combine the two activities into a new extreme sport.
In June 1999, Shaw, who uses the nickname ‘Steam’, embarked on an international tour to promote the activity across the US, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
An encounter with German tourists in New Zealand led to the formation of Extreme Ironing International, and the German Extreme Ironing Section or GEIS.
According to Wikipedia, some locations where such extreme ironing have taken place include the side of a mountain; a forest; in a canoe; while skiing or snowboarding; in the middle of a street; underwater; whilst parachuting, and under the ice cover of a lake.
As extreme ironing has branched off, the conditions can gain in extreme activity – variations now include ironing and bungee jumping which really would have to be seen to be believed.
In March 2008, a team of 72 divers simultaneously ironing underwater set a new world's record for number of people ironing underwater at once – which sort of defeats the purpose in that the whole point of ironing is to do it when the clothes are dry.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.