Thing Not To Today: holystone anything.

The question is, what is a liberated woman liberated from?

Oppression, ignorance, prejudice, constant childbirth blah blah blah...Yes, yes, we know all that (though, of course, that doesn't stop it being all important and all true). But one of the most important things a liberated woman has escaped is surely the holystone.

A holystone is a rounded chunk of sandstone used for cleaning wooden floors, and especially the decks of ships (when, and this is where my argument wobbles a little, it would of course actually have been men doing the holystoning - though not the captain or the fourth lieutenant or even the coxswain: it was a task for the lowliest of the ship's company).

So let us give thanks for mops and mats, varnish and vinyl.

And let us spend the time liberated from holystoning in proving how much talent, of both men and women, and how much advantage to the health, wealth and happiness of the world, has previously been wasted cleaning floors.

Thing Not To Do Today: holystone anything. A holystone, as previously explained, is a stone. It's holy because you have to kneel down to use it.