Thing Not To Do Today: mangle something.

You can mangle your fingers in a mangle:



 if you can find one still in use.

Mangles were for wringing the water out of clothes. You fed the dripping sheets or whatever between the rollers as you turned the handle, and tried, usually unsuccessfully, to keep your fingers clear. 

Our mangle stood under a bit of corrugated roof by the shed. It was a run-down thing, that mangle, its rubber rollers cracking and its paint dull, but it still retained its enthusiastically vicious temperament. It snatched at fingers at all opportunities. I wouldn't have been half so good on the piano if it hadn't been for the grabbing and stretching tendencies of that wretched machine.

So I'm glad mangles have gone out of our lives, though I expect it won't be long the greenest of us will be seizing with earnest delight upon this zero-carbon method of wringing out our clothes, and soon we'll be guilt-tripped into mangling away once more.

But even though we're currently part of a mangle-free generation, there are still mangling opportunities to avoid. That beautifully-presented pudding, for instance: do please start eating neatly at the edge instead of mashing the whole thing into a brown stew-like mess. Do not use the sledgehammer when assembling the flat-pack: try re-reading the instructions instead. Watch out for low bollards in the car park: they are specially designed to be just slightly out-of-sight of anyone in the driving seat of a car.

And if you're a surgeon...

...but no. 

That doesn't even bear thinking about.

Thing Not To Do Today: mangle something. There are two different words, here. Mangle, as in squeezing the water out of washing, comes from the Dutch mangel, from the Latin manganum, which is a war-engine device for throwing stones or fire (I told you they were vicious). 

Mangle meaning to mutilate comes from the Norman French mangler, probably from the Old French mahaignier, to maim.