Of ironing boards and interviews

I love the random things in this world. I mean the just plain odd, like extreme ironing – who came up with that!? (and yes it is a real thing, there’s even a BBC article to prove it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2176024.stm) I actually had a fairly mild experience of extreme ironing recently, though by mild I mean that I’m fairly certain that it wouldn’t really qualify at all. It was, however, the telling of this story to a friend of mine that brought extreme ironing to my attention.

            As you know (well, if you read this blog/know me at all you know it anyway), I’m currently experiencing that glorious part of life where every day is filled with applications and rejections, there is job-hunt-drudgery to be found at every turn, and apparently there are no actual jobs in existence, only fake ones that they advertise just to string you along. Very occasionally however, there are these bright, shining moments of hope where you get job interviews, moments at once thrilling and terrifying (presumably until you are numbed to it by repeated exposure? I don’t know, but I can imagine it would happen like that…?).

            Anyway, this relates to ironing because custom dictates that when one has a job interview, all wrinkles, crinkles and creases must be banished forthwith from one’s apparel, so as not to mar one’s appearance. Or something along those lines. For some inexplicable reason, our landlord saw fit to ‘furnish’ our house with an iron, but no ironing board (the logic here eludes me), so when I had my first interview I was sent into a wild panic at how to overcome my lack of ironing board until I was reassured that I would manage perfectly well using our dining table and a tea towel as ironing board substitutes. I can now testify that attempting this is also known as ‘begging for epic failure’. (Now, I could tell you of my frustrated wailings as I ironed more and more creases into my shirt, but this isn’t even the ‘extreme’ bit yet, so I think I’ll move on because there probably is a limit to how much writing you can get away with when the topic is ironing…)

            With my limited finances, I searched high and low (or whatever the online equivalent of ‘high and low’ is) for a cheap ironing board, but apparently it’s quite hard to get your hands on a decent ironing board (i.e. it doesn’t fall over when you touch it) for less that £25 (thank you, oh dedicated reviewers – I think you must be a hardcore reviewing fiend if you even go so far as to review ironing boards). When my brain had run out of potential ironing board-appropriate cheap places to look, I turned in reluctant, sceptical desperation to John Lewis, not expecting to have any joy from the shop where grown up people with money buy things, but lo and behold! there it was. (I’m so excited about the fact that I just used the phrase ‘lo and behold!’ – I always thought it was kind of odd - what’s this ‘lo’ing about – isn’t that what cows do? Am I being dumb? Anyone explain?) A £15 ironing board with glowing reviews; I never thought those words could sound so delightful.

            My only problem now was getting it home; I could pay them more money to deliver it, waiting a few days and probably getting it after the interview or, I could act like a crazy person and attempt to carry it home on the bus. I think you know which one I went for. I ordered my John Lewis ironing board (feeling very grown up), checking the box that said I would pick it up from the store collection point in the car park. Because sensible people only pick up ironing boards from John Lewis when they have a car. I rocked up on foot in my skinny jeans and trainers, shuffling in and trying not to be too conspicuous.

            It’s a magical land in there. Everything is in exactly, precisely, unequivocally the correct place; there are warm colours and soothing background murmurs. I recently discovered that there’s even a haberdashery section, which is cool just because of that word. Haberdashery. Go on, say it out loud; haberdashery. Beautiful. I felt a little out of place.

            After hunting around for a little while, I discovered how to get down to the collection point from inside the shop (as opposed to from the car park…), and made my way downstairs, trepidation ever-increasing. I approached the collection desk, gave the guy my order reference code, and waited as he wandered off into ‘the back’ (that even more magical land, but shrouded in mystery rather than warmth and fuzziness) to find it. He returned bearing a cardboard box almost as tall as me, a rather sceptical expression on his face. He actually asked me if this was definitely what I ordered.

I then had to decide whether or not I wanted to leave the cardboard packaging there. This was a much more complex decision than it sounds: leave the box and my burden is slightly lighter and there’s the added entertainment value in the very idea of walking around like a doofus with an ironing board; take the box and it’s an easier shape to carry and there’s less humiliation from walking around like a doofus with an ironing board. I took the box.

Still, I felt pretty conspicuous lugging a massive, slightly crumpled cardboard box through the pristine corridors of John Lewis. It was particularly awkward because at this stage I was still trying to figure out the best way to carry it without being a cause of mass destruction (or even small amounts of destruction – let’s face it, even miniature destruction is still not ideal in John Lewis). Having made it outside and reached the bus stop, I called a détente with my ironing board in our war of repeatedly bashing each other and stood there on a really busy street with a ridiculously over-sized cardboard box leaning against me. Even concealed in cardboard, my ironing board was garnering more than its fair share of attention.

The bus came and I heaved my cardboard associate towards it. We squirmed past the bus driver, whose raised eyebrows concerned me for a moment but no major mishaps occurred. Together, my ironing board and I shuffled down the bus, making every attempt not to accidentally attack the other passengers. A surprisingly successful endeavour I’ll have you know. After many bemused/entertained/slightly-frightened-in-case-I-was-carrying-a-very-oddly-shaped-bomb/gun faces had been thrown my way, we made it to my stop and I hobbled off again. Now came the walk home.

Normally this journey flies by in minutes with visions of happy-fluffy things: blue skies, tweety birds, council estates and Bargain Booze; this time was different. I felt like Frodo Baggins on his journey to Mordor – my burden inexplicably increasing in weight a thousand fold with every step, and danger lurking around every corner. In fairness my danger was in unleashing the wroth of my ironing board rather than the wroth of the One Ring, but that’s just details. The parallels are there.

After much toil, I made it home. I practically collapsed through the door, but I collapsed victoriously atop my ironing board; home mostly unscathed, bar some achey upper-body parts. The ironic (and yes that is a horrible, horrible pun, but I can’t think of another word that means what I mean) part of all this is that since I bought said ironing board some time way back in October, yesterday was the first time I actually had to use it. Yet again I’m writing on the train, but this time it’s distraction technique as I try not to think too hard about the job interview I’m en route to….