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[question] I just encountered a bit of Britspeak with which I'm unfamiliar. What, pray tell, is an airing cupboard?
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Just by typing "Airing Cupboard" in Yahoo search box, I got two sites so named. The first was used as name for place to to leave messages about one's gripes. The second involved building a louver ventilated clothing storage space.
After seeing wow's post below, I went back and looked at the pictures taken of the process of building the airing cupboard, and could see no wiring to provide warmth, which actually could be hard to make safe, nor any way of forcing air through it. Things would be packed so tightly I would be concerned that mildew could develop.
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What, pray tell, is an airing cupboard?
Geoff! You brought back a memory. When in Ireland I stayed with relatives and one day did some laundry and hung it outside. When I brought it in my cousin Patsy asked if I'd like to "put it in the airing cupboard awhile." I responded "I think they've had enough air, I just want then to dry!"
Then, she explained that an airing cupboard is a kind of large closet with shelves and places to hang things. The airing cupboard is built with warmth circulating through it so all dampness is taken out of clothes, linens, shoes etc.... I wish I had one in my house, to be truthful!
Hope that answers your question because that's the only one I know about. I would imagine airing cupboards are the same in England.
Any UK friends out there with a different solution?
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wow asks
Any UK friends out there with a different solution?
When once I visited my mother-in-law in England, I noticed that when it is a sunny day there was a lot of "hanging of the laundry on the line" activity going on in the neighborhood. There was no airing cupboard in the house so when the laundry is taken in they "decorate" the areas that are considered "warm and airy" and that would mean the heater/radiator and its vicinity, the back of the fridge (which is set far from the wall for this purpose), and the closet where the water heater is hidden.
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Thanks, wow, wwh, and WC! (Wordcrazy, not water closet!) The cause of my query was an article in a UK-based radio-controlled model jet airplane magazine. In an article on soaking balsa wood in ammonia solution for molding purposes, the author was explaining that molded balsa could be dried in an airing closet. He did comment that it required the permission of the missus!  So, now the secret's out: Aside from words, I also play with little toy airplanes. As the saying goes, "You tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys."
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So, now the secret's out: Aside from words, I also play with little toy airplanes.
Now, now! When you're too old to play with toys ... you become a model maker!
Any suggestions on how I could explain my collection of stuffed animals?
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Any suggestions on how I could explain my collection of stuffed animals?Let's see, infantile tactile deprivation leading to a desire for fuzzy things to snuggle in adulthood? Nah, too Freudian. Symbolic representations of household gods per ancient Roman custom? I think they were called penates, or some such. Or maybe they're just cute? 
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But we still haven't figured out how enough warm air is made to circulate through the contraption to make it work
P.S. I went back and looked at the pictures again, and the very first picture shows a red insulation covered cylinder which must be a water heater. So, that it how warm air is made to circulate through the enclosure..
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In reply to:
After seeing wow's post below, I went back and looked at the pictures taken of the process of building the airing cupboard, and could see no wiring to provide warmth, which actually could be hard to make safe, nor any way of forcing air through it. Things would be packed so tightly I would be concerned that mildew could develop.
Of course here in the tropics we don't need airing cupboards, but all my family have them at home in England. A hot water tank -- I think it's part of the central heating system -- is what provides the warmth. I don't think anyone's ever had any problems with mildew. Clothes only stay in the airing cupboard for a couple of days before being passed on to the wardrobe or chest of drawers, or being worn.
The question is of course if US'n households don't run to airing cupboards what do they do with their laundry during bad weather?
Bingley
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The question is of course if US'n households don't run to airing cupboards what do they do with their laundry during bad weather?
We have the amazingly modern technological convenience called the drier. It's a big box that sits next to the washer. It does exactly what its name says plus it rotates the clothes around a lot so they don't get wrinkly, unless of course you leave them in too long after the drier stops.
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Of course here in the tropics we don't need airing cupboards,
What? What? Walk around in soggy clothes do ya? Or are you on a nudist island?
Living in Philippines for a year I learned that the oven (set on warm) was a good place to get the damp out of towels before showers or baths and we left the light on in closets to keep mildew and damp at bay.
Had a heated towel rack in Hawaii which was put to multiple use warming up clothing and linens.
Liked it so much I bought one (Hammacher Schlemmer has them) for here in NE where it is on all winter and used off-and-on when summer weather turns "muggy."
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We have the amazingly modern technological convenience called the drier.Well, Jazz-O, here on the west coast of the US of A, there's an energy shortage, so the electricity-hungry clothes drier may well give way to something like the airing cupboard. Why waste heat that would otherwise go up the chimney? Oh, I know, NOT wasting resources is very un-American, so I may risk being thrown in jail or censured for thinking that the Brits have a good thing here. When I first saw the term, I thought It must be something to let one vent his grievences!  Maybe we could use the term thusly on this board, i.e. "airing our dirty laundry."
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something to let one vent his grievences
In the office where I worked we had a "Suggestion Box." After receiving several rude suggestions the Editor changed it to a Gripe Box.
Then it disappeared.
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Dear Bingley:"Of course here in the tropics we don't need airing cupboards", I spent a year in Manila ( In WWII, and Army did not provide either washers or driers.), and during the three month rainy season everything I owned got mildewed and green with mould. What's so different where you are?
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How much did they tell you about radar? My Grandfather worked on it so I know it was secret, but you might have had something to do with it.
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To add just a little to Bingley's post. Airing cupboards are for only the last bit of drying or for keeping a set of sheets ready for the guest bed. They are usually heated by the hot water tank (now usually insulated so not a lot of heat escapes) and some hot water pipes. Mine is also heated by the flue from the central heating boiler passing through. The clean washing is dried on the line, or in the tumble-dryer, or on the radiators, or as a last resort by ironing the wretched things. With the English weather, and the older English building practices, the houses are damp from drying the washing in, so you have to have somewhere to keep the important stuff so it doesn't get damp again!
Of course the cupboard gets full of fermenting wine, hyacinths before Christmas, and all the clothes that you don't have wardrobe or drawer space for.
Having just got our daughter to empty "her" wardrobe of most of her clothes, and using it as our seasonal wardrobe, we now hear she is probably off to Frankfurt for 2 years with her boyfriend, and can she store some stuff back in her room please. My wife says fine, but none of it fits me, or what does fit doesn't really do much for me!
Rod
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U.S. alternative to airing cupboard
In addition to clothes driers, as explained by Jazzoctopus, there is also the fact that nearly every house in the U.S. has central heating, which keeps the entire house free from dampness, at least in the season when the heat is on. In summer, damp is not a great problem except in tropical places like Maryland, S. Carolina, Louisiana and a few others, which rival Calcutta and Central Africa for unbearable heat and humidity. Air conditioning solves this problem.
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Having just got our daughter to empty "her" wardrobe of most of her clothes, and using it as our seasonal wardrobe, we now hear she is probably off to Frankfurt for 2 years with her boyfriend, and can she store some stuff back in her room please
As the old saying goes : "The children haven't really left home until all their stuff is out of the attic and cellar."
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And then the "empty nest" syndrome strikes.
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...tropical places like Maryland, S. Carolina, Louisiana and a few others, which rival Calcutta and Central Africa for unbearable heat and humidity.
Thanks, Bob: Cap'n Kiwi didn't believe me when I warned him about the Eastern half of the U.S.
You are right when you say that most houses here have central heating; I feel obligated to point out, however, that there are areas where people still live in, essentially, shacks. One stove for heat (assuming they can get any fuel for it), and of course no A/C. We, the richest country in the world, still allow people to live like this. Shame on us.
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We, the richest country in the world, still allow people to live like this. Shame on us.
They're still better off than most of the people in Africa. And how exactly are we detirmining that we're the richest country in the world? There are countries with higher standards of living. I think Switzerland and Sweden may be examples, but I'm not sure.
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how exactly are we determining that we're the richest country in the world? [rant]greedy carbon guzzlers[/rant 
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how exactly are we determining that we're the richest country in the world? [rant]greedy carbon guzzlers[/rant Then there's the question of what kind of wealth we mean. I've forgotten who it was who said that the true mark of how civilised a people is is how they treat their poorest members. By that standard, those in the USA who DON'T greedily consume carbon are pariahs. 
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greedy carbon guzzlers
I'd just like to point out that today (June 5th) is World Environment Day. To misquote Tom Lehrer, "then we can forget about it for another year!"
I truly hope not. Today is the day for working out how to do something (or more often NOT do something) to help the environment and then keep on (not) doing it all year.
Rod
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Bingley asks: The question is of course if US'n households don't run to airing cupboards what do they do with their laundry during bad weather?
US'ns does the same thang with our laundry in bad weather as we does in dry, sunny weather. We sticks it in the dryer.
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And now we have the second type of "airing cupboard" - a place for any and all gripes. So, while I'm at it, DOWN with all acronyms not defined at beginning of articles.- DWAANDAB
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Vaguely on topic:
Has anyone ever heard a stove/cooker/oven called a hob? I know it has another older meaning (i.e. ca. metal shelf next to a fire), but this dodgy dictionary I looked in said some people use it nowadays for a stove/cooker (to be clear, I mean: an apparatus in which electricity or a fuel is used to heat food).
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yes-- as "my stove have four hobs-- or "the place was pretty primitive-- but it had a hob to heat up a pot of coffee.." but I use burner for hob-- I think of hob as being more UK-- but i think was covered in a thread last fall-- about cookers vs stoves, and toaster ovens vs. electric kettles.. the name and the things that we consider essential-- and how they differ from country to country. Broilers generated a good deal of interest..and then the whole thing collapsed in a food thread about welsh rabbit and other forms of melted cheese!-- but YCLIU.
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Clothes go outside to dry (when it's not raining that is) and then in the wardrobe. No problem with mildew if you keep the wardrobe doors open and circulate the clothes (fresh clothes to the back of the wardrobe so that the ones that have been there a few days come forward and get worn). Here in Jakarta I have air conditioning, but it's only on when I'm at home. Bandung is more humid, but not so hot, so I didn't have air conditioning there, but the system still worked.
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Yep, hob is British, as indeed are airing cupboards. While most of us living in Britain have electric kettles (a central kitchen appliance if there ever was one), some people have plain metal kettles that they boil on the hob. They are the kind that whistle to let you know they are boiling, and have evolved in many cases into trendy, stylish objects.
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We call burners "elements". Just to add to the off-topic-ness of the thread! 
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trendy, stylish objects
My TSO sits on top of the Rayburn hob gently simmering all day to feed me endless cups of tea; and the Rayburn feeds hot water to the heavily insulated cylinder, the waste heat from which supplies the slatted shelves of the airing cupboard with an ambience of such baking comfort that the towels, blown dry on a line, come to hand crisp and fresh every day. And this means with a family of four doing maybe 12 loads of washing a week, sometimes more, we still only run the airer (carbon-guzzling beast that it be) about once a month or so.
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You're very lucky. All we get in St. John's is RDF (= Rain, Drizzle, and Fog). No laundry outside for us, unless you just so happen to be doing laundry on one of our sunny days (four, so far). See http://www.ozfm.ca/skycam.htm or http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/climate/nfld.html for confirmation!
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now to me, an element is the word for the heating element on an electric stove...( California with all its power problems, is moaning and groaning about the cost of a kwh-- it used to be $0.05-- and is now averaging $0.18-- NY used to be $0.13-- and is now pushing up to $0.24--and california problem is? ) In both cases about a 10 cent increase-- only we still pay way more than them... (and would could end up paying more still!) Needless to say-- almost no one has electric stoves in NY! (Oh to be in England {with its ready supply of North Sea petrolium!})
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Oh! I didn't realize that stoves were not electric in NY. Most are electric here, especially in Western Canada. I think I still might call the thing on a gas stove an element, just because I grew up with electric stoves and I don't think "burner" would come to mind in time!
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In NE we mostly call the cooking areas of a stove "the burners" ... I have a gas stove which is very handy when there is a storm and power failure. My Grandfather sometimes called the stove "the hob." Not much used nowadays.
I know it's popular with the electric suppliers to call those failures "outages." YEK. It wasn't allowed in copy (in my day!) because -- the Editor said -- it wasn't in the dictionary or the AP Stylebook ... it is now but I still think it's one of the "we didn't do it and it wasn't our fault anyway" words used by Power companies.
It wasn't out it *failed. And even if it fails for several days they never give you a credit or even apoligise, do they.
//end rant//
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People tend to be mighty unreasonable when complaining about storms interrupting electric power supplies. When I was living on Cape Cod shortly after WWII, the lines failed frequently because during the war new cable could not be had, and there were hundreds of mickey-mouse repair places that kept failing even in minor wind storms. A friend of the family worked for the power company, and got electrocuted by a safety switch that failed. He wasn't even supposed to be working on it, he was a supervisor, but just over-dedicated and short of qualified workers. Few consumers had any idea what the power company was up against, and how unreasonable their complaints were.
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FWIW, in the South we call burners 'eyes.'
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EYES?!?!? Are you pulling my leg, or what? [puzzled]
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Now, Bean, would I pull anyone's leg? Actually®, it's just another quaint Southernism... looky here, according to the AHD: e. Chiefly Southern U.S. The round flat cover over the hole on the top of a wood-burning stove. http://www.bartleby.com/61/75/E0307500.htmlWe've just extended it to modern cooking equipment, I reckon.
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There are those who prefer gas stoves to electric ones. I am concerned that gas may still lack safety controls. I have seen several houses burn up because gas leaked, and have seen newpaper pictures of many more. A nurse friend and her baby almost died because she took a nap while something was cooking. The gas pressure fell, the burner went out. When the gas pressure went up again, unburned gas filled the small apartment. Only a chance visitor saved her. And electric stoves have ways of regulating temperatures and cooking times that are very desirable.
That reminds me of a horror story. Just after I got out of the Army, I was riding on a bus and overheard two babysitters in front of me discussing their professional problems. One was bitching about the kids sceaming so loud she couldn't enjoy her record player music. The other replied, "When the kids I sit for do that, I stick their heads into the gas oven with the gas on but not lit until they shut up."
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Electric and gas stoves do exist here, but the most common place for cooking is a gas kompor , which is just a unit of two burners powered by a bottle of LPG.In poorer areas these cause quite common fires because houses are constructed out of rattan wickerwork or scavenged bits of wood and cardboard.
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Bingley
Electric and gas stoves do exist here...
Yes, it is the same in the Philippines but in remote villages a "stove" would be three largish stones positioned so that a round-bottomed clay pot will sit on it without wobbling. For an omelette, eggs will not be taken out of the fridge but under the house (which itself will be thatched-roofed and floored with bamboo slats) where the chicken will have their nests. Water will not be from a faucet but drawn from a deep well with a contraption made of a metal bucket attached to a long bamboo pole. This well can be a quarter of a mile away and the drawn water is brought to the house in a round-bottom clay pot balanced on the head atop a flattened turban-like, rolled braided pieces of old rag.
Since there is no fridge and market day is once a week, meats and fish are dried to preserve them and are stored in baskets that are hung from the ceiling to keep away from the cats.
Baths are taken not in tubs but at the well, with the minimum of privacy usually provided by a 3-walled construction made of woven nipa.
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Here almost everyone cooks with gas .
The amount of electric power which a family can have at a cheap rate is so small - 3 KW - that you cannot use two different strong electric devices together - oven an drier, or washing machine,...
Of course you can have more, but it becomes a lot more expensive.
Anyway, the most new gas stoves have thermic security devices - mine does not allow the gas to pass unless there is fire.
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Oh to be in England {with its ready supply of North Sea petrolium
To cross threads again, the Scots claim it's theirs!
On prices in UK, they are approx (depends on supplier, district etc)
Household Gas: Annual = £(GBP) 30 plus 1.20 pence per KWHour ($41 + 1.7 cents)
Electricity : Annual = £(GBP) 40 + 5 pence per KWHour ($55 + 7 cents)
BUT
Petrol/Car Gas=79 pence per litre = $1.10 = $4.16 per US Gallon.
Still everywhere in "Li'll old England is so cute and tiny", we can walk.
Rod (don't trust my maths/math) Ward
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(Oh to be in England {with its ready supply of North Sea petrolium!})Yeah, you'd think proximity to the source would help, wouldn't you? Newfoundland has offshore petroleum and we have the highest oil and gas prices in the country. (Still not as high as the UK but it's all relative.) One of those mysteries of economics - I guess they can make more money selling it elsewhere, so we have to import our gas from the mainland.
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Petrol/Car Gas=79 pence per litre = $1.10
or $4.16 per US Gallon.
OUCH! and we are complaining about $1.75 for cheapest grade (87 octane) here in NE.
Makes me re-think a self-drive vacation in England but they do have great public transport which is fine if you pack light and can manage it all by yourself!
How about Ireland, another destination I am considering ... Do you happen to know what are petrol prices per gallon there?
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petrol prices per gallon in IrelandNorthern Ireland has (I think) the same prices as UK, but they may have a rebate because Eire has cheaper fuel and the border is fairly open. http://www.see-search.com/business/fuelandpetrolpriceseurope.htm has a list of European prices as of 27th May. The prices obviously depend on currency fluctuations as well. To get the price in US dollars per US gallon, multiply the pence per litre by 5.3 and divide by 100 (3.8 litres per US gallon * 1.4 dollars per pound). Eire has a price (Unleaded) of 58.4 = 3.10 US dollars per US Gallon. Of course as everbody knows, Irish miles are longer or does it just seem that way? Rod
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How much did they tell you about radar?
asks jimthedog.
Like your grandfather, my father worked as a radar scientist in WWII, originally in Swanage (UK) and then in Malvern (which is why I was born there). I have taken an interest in the subject, and read several books in the past. (The room we use as a library in our house is being painted at the moment which is why it has taken me a while to find any references).
I enjoyed "The Invention that Changed the World" by Buderi and this is a good overview. I can't remember how much US stuff it has, I probably would not have noticed the lack. The only book I could lay my hands on at home is "Pioneers of Radar" by Latham and Stobbs (they have written others as well), but this is a collection of short pieces by many of the people involved (including my Mother!). Many are interesting from a personal rather than technical viewpoint, but many are self indulgent.
Radar was discovered/invented in several places round the world in the 20s (by memory) and developed at different speeds depending on how much the particular team could interest the politicians/military in the phenomenon. While the Allies and Germans both knew the other side had radar, both deception and tactics were used to hide the truth from the other side.
Try looking on Amazon or wherever for current books and then try your town library (How good is your system where you live?) Good luck. If you have a specific question you think I could help with, send me a PM.
Rod
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