Hanging Out The Washing

Hanging Out The Washing ©

By Michael Casey

Well Winter is here, Christmas will be here in less than 3 weeks too, but what do we do with the washing, it still has to be done. Hail and sleet and snow may come and go, or just old boring rain, but still the washing has to be done. We are lucky I suppose as  we have a small back garden, so we can hang it out on our two washing lines.

My blue flags are the most distinctive part of the washing, as my Shanghai wife calls my pants. When I first went to Shanghai they were hanging from a bamboo pole from her mother’s balcony high in the sky, they were a landmark so I knew where I was. It’s very strange being in a country that does not use a Roman Alphabet for the first time, so my flag was something comforting if you like,

Back to now, and marriage and family and kids and washing hanging out in an English country garden, or rather our patch of green grass out the back. I hang clothes one way and the wife hangs them another way. I suppose its East v West, though my things tend to be 3 times the size of my 3 girls things. Their knickers are more like postage stamps, or handkerchiefs with shoelaces attached, if you have girls in your house you know what I mean. Mine as I said are like flags.

When it’s raining what can you do? Well you could use a tumble drier if you had one, though that is very expensive. Or if you can work out how to use the tumble drier feature on your Indesit washing machine. No like everybody else we put the washing on the radiators all around the house, socks here and socks there, and tights here and tights there as we have 3 girls in the house. Then there are school uniforms to be dried ready for school on the Monday morning. My stuff gets relegated to the upstairs rooms, I haven’t been at school for 40 years.

One radiator is a double one so it can hold more of a load, don’t forget the bathroom radiator too, no radiator is left uncovered, the bathroom has  a shelf so a pants mobile, or rather a mobile holding pants is pressed into service hanging from the shelf above the radiator. One day it could win a Turner prize.

Steam rises everywhere so windows have to opened to allow the steam to escape, the scent of our washing powder fills the house. It really is a Chinese laundry with Shanghai wife and bilingual daughters included. My job is to turn the items, like a fish fryer in a chip shop, sadly none of the items can be eaten.

When items are dry, and we do debate as to what constitutes dry then they are whipped off the radiators and folded so they can be taken upstairs out of the way. My stuff is never paper dry as I prefer, so I take it upstairs and unfold it and put it on a radiator upstairs. Later I can remove and fold it again, without the wife knowing, or so I hope.

As we pat ourselves on the back the sun appears, unexpected Winter sunshine, we could have left them out all along, but that wouldn’t have been as much fun. The Shanghai laundry mistress would have never been able to wag her finger at us, as she gives orders and I reply “sorry I don’t speak Chinese” in my best schoolboy French.