Laundrettes

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

Since moving house, I’ve had to start using laundrettes again. New house doesn’t immediately have anywhere to put a washing machine, although our kitchen redesign and possible conservatory plans will include one somewhere. AND a dishwasher.

I hadn’t used a laundrette for at least 6 years. Both my previous rental houses came with nice new machines and were permanently festooned with airers with drying clothes. I certainly wasn’t particularly organised and have been running a demand-driven laundry system rather than a pro-active one, relying on the backstop of slovenly men the world over: a month’s supply of underwear.

Careful timing usually means I can have the laundrette to myself and spread0out over a variety of different machines. When I was a student, I used to wait til everyone else was out on the lash of a friday night, and combine laundry with watching Frasier. Last week, I came and laundered one afternoon, reading my council papers whilst my smalls danced around.

Coming on a Sunday evening was a mistake. Everything was fine to start with. Then while I was over the road in a wannabee euro-style cafe having a double espresso during the rinse cycle, all hell broke loose. Now i’m in a battle of wits with steel-eyed housewives and a genial tanned bloke in a blazer who’ve committed the cardinal sin of just coming in to use the dryers.

After an hour of this, I’m increasingly tempted by the service wash options. I gave up washing and ironing my own shirts last year in favour of paying £1 a shirt to a dry-cleaner to do it for me (if anyone out there needs wire hangers for anything…) so it wouldn’t be that much of a leap. I’m just not sure how comfortable I feel having someone else folding my smalls and bundling my socks. Will they pay enough attention to the 4 different shades of navy?

Have to dash now. Still need to defend my second dryer. Tanned blazer man is confiding that this is his first laundry in six weeks and that it’s cost him 14 quid to dry it all. When he half-jokes that he needs a woman in his life, I can’t tell whether the change in atmosphere is the women pricking up their ears or tutting to themselves.

David Colker writes (needs free registration) in today’s LA Times:

How good are the readings? Varied, to say the least. Some are quite good, even excellent. Alex Foster of Nottingham in Britain has such a sonorous voice and gives such vibrant, classy readings that it sounds as if he came right out of a BBC studio.

*Blush*.

List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2005. Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.

Hmm. Might have to go back to my diary for this one.

Harrogate X
Harlech
Chesterfield * X
Near Le Touquet Paris-Plage
Between Arras / Cambrai
Reims
Eparnay
Troyes
Dijon
Geneva *
Basel
Chamonix Mt Blanc
Lyon
Vienne
Nice
Near Perpignan
Vernet les Bains
Not Bordeaux
Saintes
Carnac
Near Villers-Bocage
Paris
Boulogne
London
Blackpool X
Rome
Leominster

Hmmm. Well, unsurprisingly, the 6 week roadtrip around France (in italics) really racked up the places visited. Only visited my parents the once (although they came up here and we met up in other places).

If I hadn’t been on holiday (!) most of my nights away would have been for work reasons (marked X). Conferences in Harrogate and Blackpool. Nights in Chesterfield were mostly because I forgot that the car park I use gets locked if you leave it too late.

(Via)

I feel a little shell-shocked. I just did an interview over Skype with the Los Angeles Times about my work with Librivox. Very flattering journalist saying nice things about my voice.

Will have to look out for the article on Sunday.