Cleaning and ironing in the absence of the owner of the house (anyone who has ever cleaned knows what a blessing that is) for an incredible 10 marks an hour (in the 80s) with relatively free time management. A dream job. I could clean. Ironing too, I thought. Everything had to be ironed – from shirts to socks, towels, washcloths… you paid by the hour, so everything was fine. What I didn’t know until then was underwear made of polyester and how the material behaves when the iron is set to “cotton/linen”. The stylish blue underpants melted into an indefinable brown lump within tenths of a second. Dispose? Confess? I then put the thing on the work surface with my timesheet and wrote something like “Sorry, those were your underpants.” It had no consequences other than the fact that I have always looked at the labels very closely ever since.
