Morphy Richards

It's not that I've never ironed, I do it pretty regularly on and off, but as Mrs Delphwynd's not around to get all the school clothes ready for me and the kids I needed to do that this afternoon. Reminded me too much of Sunday's as a kid watching my own mum slaving over a twin-tub in amongst piles of clothes, then ironing well after we were in bed.

I'm probably not the quickest though and I'm easily distracted, evidenced by the fact that I took the opportunity to blip in the middle of the task. A near miss on a burned shirt too after leaving the iron in one place too long whilst I played around with camera settings. I think ironing seems to be the kind of task in which the mind tends to wander, a sort of steam meditation, and during one of these episodes the 'morphy richards' name on the iron started to pique my interest. Who was this character...? Was it one person or two...? Were they male or female...? Why is it we say we're doing a 'bit of ironing' instead of a 'bit of morphy richardsing' (à la Hoovering when we're actually vacuuming).

Anyway, you get the idea I wasn't that enamoured with the whole ironing caper, but it's done and it did mean I now know a bit more about the history of Morphy Richards than I did before:

+ Donal Morphy and Charles Richards formed the company in Kent in 1936
+ Became a public company in 1947 and merged with a Dundee based manufacturer of white goods called 'Astral'
+ In 1949 they produced the first automatic toaster
+ Two former employs set up a rival company called 'Russell Hobbs' in 1952

All in all, the kind of afternoon that almost makes you long to get back to work. Have a good week folks.