FWIW The musings of a webmaster Sunday 2 September 2007 What's this?

 

Hung out to dry: a short story of international relations and clothes pegs

 

Clothes pegs have many uses beyond hanging your T-shirt on the line. I have known for some time that they are handy for re-sealing a bag of crisps; they are ideal for attaching Christmas cards to a length of string; they are also a useful tool for holding a sheaf of papers together. Indeed, the BBC have an entire webpage dedicated to alternative uses for the humble clothes peg.

 

But Katharine and I have recently discovered that they can be used as a catalyst for developing international relations - and all because of a shared need to hang something out to dry.

 

During a recent holiday in Italy Katharine wanted to rinse out a few T-shirts, so we went to the local supermarket and bought a length of clothes line and a pack of clothes pegs. I stretched the line across one corner of our hotel balcony and secured it at each end to form a perfectly serviceable washing line. (OK, it wasn't a thing of beauty but it did the job and, hey, I was quite pleased with it.) The clothes line we had bought for the princely sum of 3 Euros was far longer than was needed, so I left the loose end coiled up in a rather sad looking planter that separated our balcony from that of the room next door.

 

The next morning we went onto the balcony to find that the people in the room next door had taken the coiled end of the clothes line, and stretched it across the corner of their balcony so that they too could hang out a few things. "Good use of resources", I thought, and popped half a dozen spare clothes pegs onto their half of the joint washing line.

 

That evening we were sat on the balcony when our neighbours, a very charming Italian lady and gentleman, came out, smiled broadly at us and presented us with a bottle of wine: "for the clothes pegs". We were somewhat astonished, but after we had overcome our surprise managed to dredge up enough Italian to say "thank you". The lady spoke much better English that we did Italian, so over the next week or so we managed to learn a little more about each other. For that brief time we became good friends, even though we were very limited in what we could say to each other. This friendship was one of the things that made our holiday special.

 

International relations is a high powered, difficult, and sometimes dangerous business. I certainly don't mean to belittle the complex problems that exist in the world, or the efforts that are made by many men and women of goodwill to solve them. But in microcosm, our experience with our Italian friends shows that on occasion the bonds of friendship can be forged despite real challenges with communication. All it needs is a little appreciation on both sides, a determination to get along, and ideally a few clothes pegs to start the whole thing off.

 

Blessings from all of us at St. Andrew's Church in Taunton UK.

 

Adrian

 

Webmaster

NOTE: I am the webmaster of St. Andrew's Church, not clergy or a reader.  I write as 'a man in a pew' so you should not assume that I necessarily know what I'm talking about, or that what I say reflects the views of other people in our church.

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