GOLDEN HOUR #009: matter out of place

happy sunday, from somewhere in the cotswolds

Wisteria trailing the side of our garage

I’m writing to you from the comfort of an old house my mother-in-law (and devoted reader, Hi Amanda!) has kindly rented to celebrate a significant birthday. It lashed with rain yesterday but it’s been calmer since; a reprieve, for now.

It’s wild to me that this newsletter is now reaching places as far-flung as Texas. As ever, I’m grateful to my merry band of paid subscribers, who are enabling me to dedicate quality time to these words each week. If we haven’t spoken yet, why not leave a comment in response to this post? I’d love to hear a bit more about your lives.

There’s some debate as to who exactly coined the phrase ‘Dirt is matter out of place’. I always thought it was the anthropologist Mary Douglas, but The Internet has traced it’s origins back to an 1853 speech at the Royal Agricultural Society.

Nevertheless, Mary Douglas did use the phrase in her work to convey the idea that objects and people may be considered ‘other’ in environments where they are anomalous or out of step with the norms of a culture. She offers the example of shoes. Shoes, in themselves, are not considered dirty. But if we place them on a dining table then someone might be tempted to say ‘get those dirty shoes off the table!’.