A woman's work...

Just over a week ago I blipped London washing lines still in use today. Back in 1940 my mother, a Londoner, was hanging out the wash in the rural surroundings to which she and my father had migrated to escape the Blitz. In the Black Mountains of Breconshire she had no resort to  a local laundry such as her middle-class family would have used. The cottage didn't even possess a copper,  instead she had to wash things by hand in water that was fetched from a stream in buckets, and heated, if at all, in a kettle. Once line-dried (assuming the arrival of rain or cows didn't hamper the process) she would iron it using a couple of heavy flat-irons that were heated on the open grate. Of course people didn't wash themselves or change their clothes as assiduously as we now feel compelled to do but the task of getting the laundry done must have dominated women's lives to a degree that's hard to comprehend.

In the extra she's washing by hand in a basin balanced on a cider cask while my father enjoys a tête-à-tête with a bullock.