It’s Guy Fawkes night! You could go out and socialise, or your could get your elbows stuck in and do the washing up. We know what we’re doing! Dishwashing (as the Americans say) involves acquiring a scrubbing implement (such as a discarded kilt) and then cooking some food in order to wash the cutlery and stuff after.

Say it’s Chilli Con Carne, so then you do the dishes using (we hope) Ecover‘s washing up liquid. If you don’t do the dishes, your home is soon infested with rats, weasels, goats, and other vermin. Such as elks. Now some of you may have dishwashing machines, but the fact is you’ve washed up at one point in your life.

Which Heathen Invented It?!

Being a dish scrubber may have even been your job (if you want it to be, please read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London for formal advice and training)! Unless you’re Royalty. Let’s face it, the Queen isn’t reading this blog post so she can get stuffed.

We would like to know who first came up with the notion. At some moment in human history, a brain saw a dirty plate and decided the best option would be to clean it. In terms of genius, this is akin to the wheel!

Then someone invented washing up liquid! Another staggering moment for human beings. The liquid itself is made of that stuff you use in those blow bubble toys you used as a kid – they don’t clean the dishes, but the bubbles are great fun and make you feel like you’re doing a great job.

Just blame any subsequent food poisoning and/or dirty dishes on a man. Men don’t know how to wash up proper, yo.

What we’d really like to know is this: was there ever a time when washing up didn’t happen? Did people sit in their homes, over months, slowly being submerged in a mass of filth and slime? Was it some great non-washing up tragedy which sparked off the dishwashing revolution?

You know, like the equivalent of the Great Fire Of London… except it would be the “Great Dirty Dishes Non-Fire Of London”. Which is kind of cute, but at the same time so grotesquely lacking in cleanliness. Ho hum.