I have always wanted to go to a launderette. I think they would be the perfect setting for a play, or a film short. Whirring sound, smell of soap powder, sitting with strangers watching laundry go round and round.
Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears knew the potential of launderettes. Lovely film.
Richard Thompson also knew. 'And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me. Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing'. I heart Beeswing. 'There was animal in her eyes'.
Anyway, I have now been to a launderette. The sharpness of soap powder got up my nose. But it was warm, and the noises were comforting, and the drums were huge, and we were high. Reading Alice in Wonderland in a launderette on Green Lanes. Dive into the drum, rather than a rabbit hole, and fall through laundry world, where the odd socks go.
We took the enormous bag back along the road between us, our hands plunged into the hot clothes, the way Amelie does with barrels of beans at the market. Made the house smell of clean.
1 comment:
How romantic. Now, when I were a lass we did all the washing at the launderette - it was that or you had to use a big tub at home. I read all my A level books in the launderette.So, what goes around comes around.
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