three little kittens

There are so many versions of this children's rhyme, often told as a story, that I think I'm going to have to do a series. In this version, a cheapish book once owned by a girl called Jacinta and published in 1991 by Award publications, London, the kittens start hunting for their mittens when a somewhat cross mother cat says that they are naughty for losing their mittens and shall have no pie. The kittens search the attic, ask a playful puppy and a hen as to the whereabouts of their mittens and then remember that they left the mittens hanging on a bush whilst they picked berries for the pie. Of course. Cats wearing clothes and picking berries.

More trouble follows when they eat their pie wearing said mittens and mother cat is again very cross. The kittens decide to wash their mittens and hang them up to dry, thereby getting back in mother cats good books. Although why she let those naughty kittens eat while wearing mittens in the first place is a mystery to me.

Gain? or SOS?

From here, which I think is one of my new favourite reads. Really, I think this fetishism of domestic labour is on a par with this, only much more glamourous.  "Because when you’re doing household labor, it is of the utmost importance that you are hot, in high heels, and headless." Go and see the rest of the pictures, they'll make you laugh, and then you'll want to put your head on the desk and cry because, dress it up however you like, there is still the bloody washing to do. Week in week out. And probably by you. Even if you work.

Marie Claire March 2005

And laundry 'round here isn't sexy or even pretty. I am lucky to have Mr Helpalot, but he isn't exactly a wife, because he is a man. So even when I'm working outside the home and he isn't, I still seem to spend a lot of time putting washing through. Not all of it, but a fair bit of it.And let me not even start on the drying of clothes on clothes racks over winter. I just can't go there yet. But I will, you can be sure of that.