Laundrette Etiquette

During the past few weeks, during the time that people under the age of 20 now call Summer, we were unlucky enough for our spring to run dry. Though this had nothing to do with the beautiful sunny days we had, just the lack of rain. We have always had trouble with our spring partly due to the fact that the chap in the next field was using our water supply for his quarry when cutting stone. He has a 2500 Litre tank that he started to fill around 3 times a week, which also helped us to have a dry water spring.

Anyway, the point of this is that while the spring was dry, we were unable to use our washing machine, now we have had rain, our washing machine has decided that enough is enough and has died.

So off to the laundrette in Hay on Wye! Not the best way to spend my first day away from work in a while I promise you.
Now this was only my second time to ever visit a laundrette, the first time was many years ago when I went camping to Porthcawl and it rained all night, so in the morning I visited the laundrette and popped my tent in to one of their industrial dryers.

On arriving at the laundrette, I was not quite sure what was a washing machine or what was a dryer. There was only one other person in there, a lady, but all the dryers and washing machines seemed to be full and working.
As soon as one of the washing machines became available we quickly put our washing in to it. Now then! How much washing powder should we use, how much to use the machine and how do we set it to the correct programme? It was all a little odd to be quite honest! The machines were not modern in anyway, big huge things they were.

Anyway, after sorting it out and maybe after adding too much washing powder, we started to fill the top loader washing machine, this was much easier, and £2 cheaper too than the front loader. I wondered why this was, and soon found out that it is because the top loaders just do not work, so as soon as there was one free, we put it into the front loader, £13 had been spent by now!

Now I am not sure how many others have ever been to a laundrette, but they are the sort of places that are not good for anyone's souls. Within minutes I was bored beyond belief! The lady next to us was quite helpful when asked how too, or how much etc. but was not very chatty.
Great I thought!
Now I get bored very very easily indeed, I need things to keep me awake and this place was almost as tiresome as an 18 hour shift at work.
As time went by slow second by even slower second, others came into the laundrette. I soon noticed that most of the people that use laundrettes have some what of an etiquette about them, so some follow the rules and some do not it seems.

Now, regular visitors to the laundrette seem to use the blue bags that you can buy from Ikea, you know the one's made from tarp poling kind of bags. These are the "Hardcore", "Every Thursday" people that use their local laundrette.

I also noticed that it is classed as very bad form to watch someone else'e washing going round and round in their washing machine, though not that they will say anything, they either give you a funny look as if you are trying to follow their knickers going around, or they stand infront of their machine to stop you looking.

If you are "Hardcore" you know how long your clothes are going to take in the machines, so then they seem to overload the machines, put the correct amount of washing powder in, and then bugger off shopping while the machines do their work. Not like myself, sat there watching MY clothes go round and round.

After about one hour, I noticed that there is a timer on the machines, counting down to 1 minute, I was gutted to find this out so late, if I had known this I too could have buggered off for a look around Hay on Wye. I noticed this when the machine I was using showed me that there was just 13 minutes left until the end of my boredom. The after what seemed like a lifetime, I looked again, 11 minutes. OH MY GODS! How bloody boring is this place.

I tried to take a step back to look at myself from someone else's eye's. There I was, sat with my two empty Black Bags (not the Ikea bags I mentioned before, I felt so cheap!) ready waiting to fill with my now washed clothes. In jeans with Chinese Sauce on the one leg after my awful supper that I ate last night and then had to throw up, because my wife noticed that they were oozing blood not red Chinese sauce as I thought), and with a thick wool jacket on done right up to my neck as the only clean T Shirt I had was one my mother had bought me for Xmas the year before with a X Mas message on the front! To make matters even worse, I was sat there watching the clothes go round and around like some kind of window licker, with a box of Daz sat infront of me, not knowing that they proved washing powder for just 20p a cup full.



I hope I never have to visit the laundrette again, but I ever do, I will be sure to have my blue Ikea bags, use their washing up powder, and to bugger off out of there for an hour.