Destination AndyLand

On Sunday afternoon, halfway through ironing work shirts for Monday, the iron started playing up. The steam stopped coming and instead water started dribbling everywhere. “No problem”, I thought, we’re heading to the airport to pick up the brother and sister in law, we’ll set off early and pick up another at Asda. Doh! Paul reminded me it was Sunday and the 24 hour Asda didn’t live up to the name on the sabbath.

The comment about popping into Asda and buying another one appears quite flippant and really doesnt do justice to my shopping history. I suppose this is the bit where I come clean about how I’ve been such a skinflint with irons over the last few years. We bought a new iron when we moved into the new house and I have to admit I bought a cheap Asda model for less than a tenner. It broke down after two years and I thought to act daft about how old it was, pretend I’d lost the receipt and chance my arm and take it back for a replacement. They didnt sell the same model any longer, no surprise after that time, and even the barcode had been reassigned to a television. After some discussion the nice lady agreed to replace the iron and found what she thought was the discontinued iron product code. I happily agreed that it sounded like the fifteen pounds I paid (hehe) and I left the store with a new Morphy Richards worth twenty quid.

Score so far, two years ironing for £10 and an upgraded iron.

The story doesnt end there, two years later the new iron stopped working, the steam burst button wouldnt press down so I took it back. So in March 2006 they swapped it for a slightly updated version of the same model. At no cost!

Score so far, four years ironing, total cost £15 and in fact this brings us right up to date and the third iron giving up the ghost. So in fact that make the score seven years ironing for £15. How good is that!

Except, after all that I’ve never been that happy with any of those irons. I’m the chief ironer in the house, which is more about my control freakery than anything else, and I just never loved those irons.

I was thinking about this on Monday while looking for a new iron to “pop” out and buy and decided that no longer would I scrimp! I wanted to have an iron that can simply DO the job.

In my search I found this iron and knew I had fulfilled my quest!.

Gaze upon this iron and tell me that it is not a thing of beauty. It is also, if there ever was such a thing, a Mans iron! Look at the colours, it’s like an 1980’s teenage boys duvet cover in black, silver and white. Actually my duvet also had a stripe of red but y’know its almost

The next day I got to try out the new iron and OMG I ironed two shirts in half the normal time. I’m not kidding when I say it is amazing, upon unpacking I was slightly upset to find the steam burst button on the wrong side for my thumb. After ironing two shirts I noticed that I hadnt even had to press the steam button once and results were amazing. Compare this to old irons that needed steam button pressing constantly with poor results.

The morale of the story is here.

I spent quite a lot more than I normally would and was rewarded.

Go figure!

PS. Its an £80 iron but was on sale at Argos for £40 so yay! still saved some cash