So much washing…
This is a short entry because of a depressingly monotone and uneventful day. I have had a morning full of washing with a short interval in the afternoon which was full of camper van: followed by more washing and then going to work. This is not the stuff from which gripping literature is fashioned.
The difficult thing about washing is that your teenage daughter comes home with a truckload of it, and you do some and hang it to dry, and then you do a bit more and hang that to dry but have to squeeze it in a bit because of not having all that much space. Then the next morning none of it is dry but the thing is that there is more of it, because of there being four people in the house who have all worn clothes and then abandoned them in the laundry basket.
It was made worse today because of having to wash the sheets on our bed. This was because of the dog not having been quite as fastidious as she might have been with her personal hygiene before she came to visit us when we were having our coffee.
I had washed a load overnight, so I pegged it outside in the garden, because it wasn’t actually raining. We had to leave then, to go to the the farm to carry on with the camper van repairs, so we left the two resident daughters with detailed instructions about how to collect the garden washing in and then peg the next load out. Above all it was essential that they paid extra-special attention to not dropping anything under any circumstances and to beware of reckless inattention leading to either of them walking about carelessly.
The latter instruction, of course, was made crucially important by the dog still having some digestive difficulties, and every now and again having to make a hasty panic-dash for the back door.
We took the hoover with us to do some cleaning up, because the girls assured me that they were unlikely to need it, which surprised me because the top of the house is in desperate need of hoovering.
We had not been over at the farm for very long before the heavens opened and the girls rang to reassure me that they had brought the washing in, and spread it all over the house because of the absence of anywhere to hang it. They said that there was another load in the machine but it would have to stay where it was because of the house being too small.
After that it rained and rained.
When we got home tonight there was indeed laundry everywhere, hanging limply and damply on every item of furniture and occupying every possible space where there might be spare air without anybody needing to walk through it.
I rearranged some of it for maximum efficiency, and put away some things that weren’t really very wet any more, and Mark looked in horror at it all and lit the fire, which helped a bit.
It is like pushing your way through a tropical jungle now: hot and steamy with stuff dangling about all over the place. There are towels and socks and blouses and kilts and games kit and more underwear than you might find in an Ann Summers second hand shop.
I am hoping very much for sunshine tomorrow, because even as I write there is a load in the machine and another one waiting, and of course we have all worn clothes again today.
Oliver will be home with his luggage in a couple of days.
I can’t tell you how much I am trying not to think about the ironing.
