One of the great mysteries

I’m delighted that we have a dryer. I mean in weather like this what use is it having a clothes line unless you are one of those people who like to use starch on the collar of your shirt.

Hang it out on the line any of these nights and you are sure to have a nice crisp shirt. Freezin' of course and useless for wearing, but crisp nonetheless.

All this brings me in a kinda roundabout way back to the dryer. It’s been making a rare noise this last while and I’m afraid it might pack in at the most inopportune moment, which, by the way is any time now.

You see I have experienced a dryer deciding it would not work once before and I have to admit it did not go down too well in our house. After all, well it dries stuff doesn’t it and it’s not nice putting on wet clothes.

I mean even those Olympic swimmers put on dry clothes before they jump into the water, but I suppose in their case it wouldn’t matter.

That said the last time our dryer packed in, I realised that by having a quick poke around its insides I might be able to solve one of the big questions of all times - where do all those missing socks go after they are washed?

I was about to embark on this great quest until I saw the wee sticker saying that you shouldn’t look inside unless you were a suitably qualified person and that was that.

The flashback of the old black and white remote television came back to haunt me and I thought I’d best leave it alone.

But I was curious now and even though I couldn’t get the answer by taking the machine apart I was certain there had to be an answer out there for this great puzzle.

And so I began my hours of painstaking research in the hope that I might actually stumble upon the answer.

I knew that the mystery has existed for ages but was convinced there still must be a logical reason for it and, I have to admit it, I came up with a conspiracy theory.

Yes folks I decided that the whole missing sock thing was a huge conspiracy thought up by the big companies who make washing machines and dryers.

My reasoning was this.

It’s not that often that people will go out and buy a washing machine or a dryer. In fact once that initial purchase has been made, most people won’t buy a new one until their machine packs up for good.

So, while it might be expensive enough at the start, people get lots of years from their machines, and all that means the companies don’t have as many sales as they might hope.

Of course that means they have don’t have to make all that many machines, so they have to find other stuff to keep their workers busy.

And that’s where the socks come in.

A global trade secret agreement between the different manufacturers means all the machines are programmed to suck socks out into a huge vacuum where they are passed on to the factory floor and then paired with a matching sock sucked from somewhere else.

And, since they are clean, they can then be sold.

And the companies who don’t sell many machines will be happy because people will be buying lots of socks, because well, there always seems to be ones going missing in the wash!

I thought I’d cracked it at that until I started thinking back to pre-washing machine times.

I mean look at all those old western films with Indians in them and you’ll see they weren’t wearing any socks.

And I reckon it’s probably not because there were no socks invented – just more likely they could never find a pair that matched.

For the cowboys it didn’t matter if they matched or not, after all who was gonna see ‘em through those big boots?

But that put a big hole in my conspiracy theory and I had to back to the drawing board. (Before drawing boards were invented what did people go back to…mmm)

Anyway, I decided if it wasn’t the fault of the machine then it quite simply had to be the socks themselves and that is when it hit me.

Of course it had to be the socks, I mean all the other bits of clothing are just that, bits of clothing.

But socks are different I mean they’ve got soles haven’t they?

And I reckon that it just gets to a stage where they get fed up with being trampled on all day and decide to make a break for it to the great big sock heaven that must be out there somewhere.

So why, if it is such a great place, doesn’t its mate go at the same time then, I hear you ask?

Quite simple really…

Some socks are just odd, aren’t they…