It was at the back of a school hall, sitting on a blue plastic chair, watching my son erratically kick a chest-height dummy while a medley of synth instrumental numbers twanged in the background, that I finally had to admit something I have long suspected: I have issues with laundry.
Like many of my generation, I am caught between late 20th-century social expectations about cleanliness and 21st-century anxiety about ecological impact. I am programmed to believe that I should wash all my tops after a single wear, while knowing that the profligate use of chemicals, energy and water involved in doing so is going to very quickly poison the planet. I dump whole items into the laundry basket where a quick spot wash with a cloth would almost certainly do the trick, and then stand at the riverside and despair at the state of the filth and flooding I have contributed to.
