Whiter Than White

A Journal Entry:

I sip my coffee. My iPad is out of date, a ‘generation two’. It makes searching the net tedious, and there is frustration that I cannot download iMovie. At the moment, I’m re-searching MoJo Journalism. MoJo is a style of journalism using only the most basic of equipment. In the past, a 35mm camera, notebook and pencil were the necessary journalistic tools. Today an iPhone, external microphone and editing software allows the journalist to produce an item anywhere in the world, and publish it in an hour. I see the potential for MoJo at The ‘Well Being Shows’ Liz, and I organise. Although I have a MacBook Pro for business use and it has Final Cut editing software, I like the idea of editing on an iPad. My fingers are too big to use iMovie on my phone.

I search eBay and discover plenty of 6th Generation iPad with 256gb of storage and 4G priced around four-hundred pounds. I decide to buy one. After the decision is made, I follow the usual path of researching iPads. My coffee is getting cold, and for a moment, my thoughts are on sipping the coffee without spilling it on my whiter than white tee shirt.

Whitening Chemicals From Around The World

Many of my friends know I am obsessed with clean clothes. Working out how to get white linen fresh and snow white is one of my most significant challenges. Next to the washing machine is a collection of cleaning powders, soap flakes and liquids, stain soaps, bicarbonate of soda, soda crystals. Whenever I travel I always return with a new white-washing miracle chemical. My holy grail is not a golden challis. It is blinding white shirts. An arch-enemy is the coffee stain: one of the most difficult to deal with: unless the coffee is washed out before the material dries it will stain the cotton.

Liz is downstairs: I hear choking: “Lizzy, are you ok?” No reply, my voice is raised “Lizzy, are you ok?” No response: Christ Lizzy is choking, and there is silence. Fuck, I don’t want Lizzy to die, out of bed in a second, racing down the stairs “Lizzy, are you ok?”

In the kitchen, Liz is folding my white shirts. She has hiccups, loud and strange sounding. “Christ, I thought you were choking. I called and then shouted, you didn’t hear” “I couldn’t hear what you were saying: I have hiccups: did you know you’ve spilt coffee on your tee-shirt?”

Panic over. I realise how much Lizzy means to me: the fear of her choking went through me like assassin’s knife. The shirt is put in to soak. I decide there is no need for an iPad. Other things in life have more importance.