Leaving a Wet Towel on the Bed: One Can Scarcely Believe It

Dear Gentle Reader, one must introduce you to a most particular domestic arrangement. A certain husband, it must be said, spent six months being asked to install a towel rail. Upon finally doing so, he appears to have concluded that beds are superior drying surfaces for leaving a wet towel.

It has come to this author’s attention that a certain woman, upon ascending the stairs one otherwise unremarkable morning—children dispatched to their various institutions, husband presumably to his—made a discovery most distressing. She was, one notes, on her way to her home office. And yet. A white towel on white bedding stopped her entirely in her tracks. One might have expected such camouflage to provide some small mercy. It did not. To this particular woman, dear reader, it may as well have been neon. She has, after all, been here before.

The inspection began. Fingers across the duvet. Is there a smell? There might be a smell. Surely this is catastrophic. Surely the entire bed requires stripping, washing, rebuilding from its very foundations. But no. It is damp. Just damp enough to be genuinely irritating, never quite enough to justify the nuclear option. One notes this is somehow worse.

Dear reader, one must pause here to observe a fundamental imbalance. This particular woman does the laundry. She is therefore intimately acquainted with the consequences of damp bedding in a way that a certain husband, who has never once approached a washing machine with urgency, simply is not. That evening she crawls into bed hoping for one small luxury: clean sheets, clean pyjamas, her book. Instead she finds herself pausing every third paragraph to sniff the air above the duvet, convinced there is a smell. There may not be a smell. One cannot be certain. He arrives later that night to a bed long since dried, blissfully unbothered.

But the crimes do not end there. One regrets to report that this same husband has recently taken to borrowing this author’s towel. Her towel. Repeatedly. Despite repeated requests to desist. The dream gift, one notes she has begun to dream quite specifically, is a personalised towel in a completely different colour, her name embroidered across it in letters large enough to leave no room for ambiguity. Though one suspects, and herein lies the true tragedy of this domestic arrangement, he would steal it anyway.

One finds oneself marvelling at the extraordinary peace of mind enjoyed by a certain type of man. Truly, one can only aspire to such magnificent indifference.

Dear Gentle Reader, one suspects this is merely the first of many observations one must share about the peculiar habits of those around her. Shall we continue?

Send this to someone