THIS business of maritime explorers recreating the journeys of other long dead maritime explorers Tim Severin is at it again. He has apparently left Indonesia's remote Kai Islands to begin a three month journey retracing the travels of the 19th century naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace.

I need hardly add that he is using a craft made by traditional methods (oh I don't know - mud, mango skins, baked iguana diaphragm, the lower vertebrae of Colubus monkeys plus and of yak mucus, I suppose), based on the same design as that used by Wallace.

Severin will, however, make use of non traditional satellite and computer technology.

I don't know if the point of the journey is to prove beyond reasonable doubt that A.R. Wallace could have discovered the remote Leucctian archipelago, Ukerwewe Island or Joe Batt's Arm yonks before Count Joshua "Wellieboots" Waldengrave, but I imagine that is highly likely.

But look: what if Alfred Russell Wallace had, instead of planning his very own trip, devoted his time to ret racing the travels of the 17th century lepidopterist Julius Shawn Clopperthorn - and Clopperthorn in turn had been obsessed in following in the steppes of Georgian hoochy koochy lyricist Ivan Nackforippinemoff, and Ivan himself had devoted his life to recreating the heroic nine month Arctic Ocean marathon of Finnish turkey trot supremo Sven Baldqvist - where would he be today, in terms of discovery?

I agree: not very far.

Of course there is nothing wrong with recreating age old Journeys, nor does every trip have to be "original". We are not all obsessed with the new and modish. I myself am going to the south west shortly and will be walking in lots of other people's footsteps and making the traditional change at Limerick Junction, but so long as the ham sandwiches are freshly made and the bar service comes with a smile and I can watch the "undulating" landscape through the train window and don't have too many irritating delays and get there in one piece, with someone to meet me, I will be happy enough.

That is all the adventure I look for these days.

Right. Now to more serious matters. I see where Nelson Mandela has told a court in Johannesburg that he was saddened to have to wash his dirty linen in public.

I am a little disappointed that the elderly South African President should feel humiliated by such a necessity. (One is aware of how far) South Africa has progressed in recent years, but there remain vast areas of that beautiful country in which the public washing of dirty clothing is commonplace, and no humiliation whatsoever attaches to the experience.

In rural areas, Monday mornings on the banks of rivers throughout the new republic see a (veritable) hive of activity. More to the point, the communal joy in such activity is delightful to witness. I myself shall never forget the colourful wash day scenes in which I participated on many a Monday morning in the 70s along the banks of the Oranje, the Tarka, the Barona and the Wilge, not to mention less fashionable but equally pleasant wash ins on the Vaal and Bloemhof dams.

There was never any question of being humiliated - quite the opposite: the workers, entirely female of course, (apart from my own presence, the subject of much ribald amusement in these attractively pre political correctness days) made a regular riverside party of the washing business. Social status was quite irrelevant.

That is the way it should be. The washing machine is a useful item but its contribution to community disintegration and alienation has perhaps not been fully realised.

But why do people speak of washing dirty linen (in public)? Do they imagine we might suspect them of washing clean linen? While we are being lussy, and we are rarely anything else, it seems strange too that it is only dirty linen which is occasionally washed in public. For some reason, people, no matter how poor their situation, seem to have private facilities for the cleansing of their cotton, wool, silk, rayon, calico, denim, Dacron, gingham, cheesecloth, burlap, flannel, crepe de Chine, tweed, worsted and chiffon.

And in most homes, so called bed linen is rarely linen (at all).