Occasionally sunny Cambridge 


A pain in the laundry

Ah, Freshers’ Week in Cambridge, the sound of suitcases on wheels rumbling across courts, the new student’s bright smiles of terrified enthusiasm, the dubious grunts of parents dropping off crate after crate of their undergraduate child’s equipment.

A time before classes commence, a time of parties, drinking, entertainment and having hot wax spilled down the back of your trousers without so much as a formal introduction.

Yup, at a drinks function at the fashionable Riverbar Kitchen a student (on scholarship no less) managed to knock over one of the exceedingly large wax candles adorning a trendily low table and righteously splatter the back of my brown cord trousers. Not the cocktail combination I was looking for.

Ever tried getting dried wax out of those little fabric grooves?

Fortunately the international guild of professional butlers (a site destined to become the thinking man’s aide to running a home) and a2z carpet agree that the essential procedure is to cover the affected area with brown paper and apply a warm iron, then stand back and watch the paper absorb the wax.

Well, obviously, one doesn’t really stand back and watch.

That would just start a fire.

Anyway, my favourite cords now look less like a recently frosted biscuit and just kinda patchily discoloured. There’s still a wax residue in some of those hard-to-reach little grooves in the fabric.

Time to go buy dry cleaning fluid and some POG (Paint-Oil-and-Grease, apparently) remover.

Just as well nobody expects me to have started any research on, y’know, international law or anything yet.