My Friend

The gardens in the houses in my row slope around in a vaguely semi circular fashion and I can just catch a glimpse of the end of a clothes line in the garden of a house several doors up from mine.

Each morning I engage in a sort of risk assessment as to where it might be wisest to place our wet laundry to dry. The tumble drier doesn’t get a look in as I have a deep-seated prejudice against them, borne out of my rearing and bitter experience. I resent the clothes-horses taking up room and the fact that it takes longer for the clothes to dry inside. On the other hand, it is so satisfying to watch the clothes outside on the line blowing back and forth drying briskly in the air.  So many considerations to factor in: the temperature, the forecast, how much time I have, if I will be there to take the clothes in before it gets too late, whether there is “good drying”.

As part of my calculation, I always check to see whether “my friend” (i.e. the person in whose garden the clothes line I can see) has decided to put her washing out.  I’m assuming it’s a she. I haven’t bothered trying to work out which house the clothes line belongs to or who “my friend” is.

It annoys me when I see her wash drying if I don’t also have one drying too.  Whether my friend has decided to risk the Irish weather is the most persuasive input into my own daily decision making process.

When my husband cottoned on as to the store I was putting in “my friend’, he was very surprised. “She doesn't know whether it will rain anymore than you do.” I disagreed with him from my very core but was disquieted later when I realised he was right.

I still check every morning to see what my friend has decided.  She doesn’t put clothes out on her line every day and sometimes I will put mine out when she doesn’t and vice versa. However, the sight of her laundry flapping on her line is sure to set me in a whirl of laundry pile excavations so I can hang a wash out too as soon as ever possible.

Note: I wrote this post a few years ago. It's been a while since I've been meaning to write a blog and time has ticked by. Since then, I've moved house and no longer have "my friend".