Talking to a mainland Chinese friend about this current cold spell (minimums of 0˚C, which is cold enough for London, especially in recent decades) and her offering to let me have her electric blanket since she and her flatmates leave the heating on all the time, I’m reminded of my DIY dry cleaning.
Winter coats (and sweaters / jeans too) can be dry-cleaned (for smells only, though) by sitting on the back of a chair placed right up against the radiator, if you can’t actually put them on the radiator itself. The heat will lift off all the smells (eg, food in Indian and Chinese restaurants; cigarette smoke in the old days, especially in pubs and, even earlier, on public transport).
An evening class student Pam, who used to come to the pub after classes, told me that after I taught her this trick, she decided to try it out at home.
She reported this the following week:
As she took her coat to the radiator, she muttered, “She’s wrong, she’s wrong, she’s wrong.”
The next day, when she fetched her coat from the radiator, she came away saying, “She’s right, she’s right, she’s right!”
NB: If you’re going to try this yourself, make sure it’s not a radiator that might start a fire with fabric being so close to it, or one that has an air vent that shouldn’t be covered over (e.g., an oil-filled radiator).
(London, second half of 1990s)
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