You wouldn’t think it possible, would you, for launderettes to have character? But they vary enormously, as I’ve discovered lately, travelling around with my husband, my bulging plastic laundry bag in the boot of the car.
Some weeks ago our washing-machine finally reached the point of no return. Like those old maths textbook problems, more water leaked on to the floor than I could conveniently replace from the tap, thus creating endless arithmetical imponderables and a very wet kitchen.
We can’t really grumble, since we bought it second-hand ages ago from a sweet old lady in a nearby village. It wasn’t exactly cheap but, as David said, she was such a very frail old soul that we could hardly beat down the price. (Worth remembering if you happen to have a sweet old silver-haired relative handy and you want to sell something.)
Although public wash-houses of one sort and another have been around for a very long time, I haven’t had a great deal to do with them in the past. I remember enquiring about laundry facilities earlier in our marriage.
We had just moved to a new district which, we were told, had ‘no need for such places as launderettes. People here can afford their own private washing facilities.’ Oh, I was glad to leave there.
And just as towns and villages vary greatly, so, too, do launderettes and the people who use them. There are the young, bed-sit brigade; retired old chaps in for a warm; mums glad to rest their legs; middle-aged ladies who need a chat. (Well if you are lonely and you don’t play golf or bingo, where do you go for a chat?)
There are Good Samaritans who potter and hum and fold up absent owners’ washing for them. There are elegant souls who trip in with tiny, crisp gingham bundles held fastidiously between finger and thumb. (Their washing going in often looks cleaner than mine does coming out.) There are vague, beaky professors leaving trails of wet socks and artful twelve-year-old boys who know all the dodges. Some are busy, steamy places presided over by jolly ladies who provide piles of magazines and who will do your washing for you if you ask them nicely. Some are pastel and unmanned, making do with lots of little machines dispensing just about everything except advice – perhaps the most needed ingredient of all, as any engineer who goes around repairing the unending damage caused by assorted users will tell you.
‘You wouldn’t believe the things people do,’ they sigh. And the list ranges from drying somebody else’s washing by mistake to ‘posting’ their coins down a crack between two machines and then wondering why nothing happens.
A common fault is to load one machine and put money in the one next to it. They press the handle and stand, amazed, as their washing just sits there all dormant while an empty neighbouring machine mysteriously fills up and starts to chug.
My own first novitiate gaffe was to grab someone’s private detergent packet and sprinkle its contents liberally into my machine.
‘I wonder why that lady is scowling at me like that?’ I was thinking vaguely to myself, and then she told me.
Nowadays I am much more knowledgeable. I carry the right coins, my own measured jar of soap and a carefully marked plastic bag. Our local launderette caters to some terribly fierce elderly ladies.
‘My laundry bag, if you don’t mind,’ they bray, pouncing on to my lap like tweedy lizards. But since the bag dispensing machine always supplies the same sky blue model, it is hard to tell.
I marked mine after an unseemly tug of war with a militant soul who looked not unlike a gnarled tree drawn by Arthur Rackham. We found my gloves and soap jar inside, which at least persuaded her to let go. However, she went on muttering evil spells to herself all the way up past the butchers.
But perhaps for real life drama it would be hard to beat the launderette I sometimes use, which has recently installed green stamps. The idea seems laudable enough.
‘For the Even Greater Convenience of our Customers’ it says, and it goes on to list exactly how many stamps one is allowed per wash load (6), per dry clean (20) and per soap purchase (3).
The trouble is that, instead of the stamps popping up by one’s own particular machine, they all, by some magical method of remote control, roll out of a communal slot in the wall down at the far end. And nobody takes their exact due. Some people collect their stamps casually, before they leave. Others rip them off avidly the moment they appear. But few read the notice properly.
‘Oh look – Green Stamps Given,’ they say brightly and they look around and see about a hundred and fifty of the things ticker-taping out of the far wall. So, naturally enough, they march down and seize the lot. They only make this mistake once, however.
‘Here, who’s had my stamps?’ thunders a little red-faced woman, staggering under the weight of a season’s dry cleaning. This sparks off indignant reaction all round.
‘Cor, don’t it make yer sick!’
‘They’d ’ave the clothes off yer back for tuppence.’
‘Oh God, what have I done?’
‘Green stamps? What green stamps?’
‘I say, do you mind, six of those are mine.’
‘Do you mean to say we get green stamps?’
Oh well, at least it breaks down a few barriers. But I seem to be the only person who finds it funny. Or I did, until some unthinking cad marched in yesterday and grabbed my six. Immediately I became absolutely livid.
‘How damned unfair,’ I quivered. And I don’t even collect green stamps.