There is a shopping bag behind the laundry door. It has a special purpose: the answer to that eternal, infernal question: Where do unmatched socks go?

I once read that they end up sunning themselves on the beaches of Tanzania. Why not? We now know that flip-flops of the world escape to Kenya’s Kiwaiyu island. So it’s not difficult to imagine a soggy sock, in the despairing depths of a dreary sock marriage (and a job that’s more than a little on the nose), slipping down the washing-machine outlet pipe, away from its unsuspecting laundry dance partner, and out into the wide wonderful ocean. And then, finding itself on some idyllic distant shore, being swept off its feet foot, so to speak, by a sock mismatch made in heaven – ‘Shirley Valentine for Socks’. Sigh…

But the truth, I fear, is as dull as wash-water – missing socks, it appears, lie so near, yet so far from their perfect match somewhere in the bowels of the dark sock-drawers of their myopic owners. In our household, these sad singles end up in the bag behind the laundry door, invariably, not far from their original sock suitors.

Time for me to go and match-make.

For other hated household chores, see The Daily Post.