Washing In Washing Out a comedy

Washing In Washing Out ©

By

Michael Casey

With all the weather we are having it’s a big job to get the washing dried. You look outside, you lick you finger and hold it aloft, and what happens? A pigeon dumps on you, your wife laughs and says its good luck. At least it won’t be on the clean washing.

She hangs washing portrait fashion, you hang it landscape fashion, you “debate” about surface area and drip rates. She just says “you drip”, case over, she should have been a barrister in another life. You say she could never have  been a barista, she always makes your coffee wrong. She says you should drink green tea, and not with milk, that spoils it.

Then she goes to scream to her mother in Shanghai, it really is like chickens, ask any Chinese you know. You are left to hang her knickers on the line. They are like small hand-kerchiefs with laces attached. As for your pants, they are like flags. Blue flags.

You go inside to drink green tea, WITH  MILK, defiantly drunk, as she screams to Shanghai. The wind builds and your flags fill out like a windsock, or barrage balloon, in her opinion. At least they’ll dry in the wind. So you retire to the computer to see if any LinkedIn folks want to help you with your ideas. In the background, Panzi is mentioned, that’s you, the fat fat boy.

You look up, clouds have appeared from nowhere, so you dash to the garden. Its thundering and hail, hail is falling. So you grab the washing, and trip, at least you hold the washing upright. The washing is clean but your knees are covered in mud.

She looks up and asks “my knickers”, so you have to dash back out for those, falling over again and nearly being garrotted by the washing line. Once back inside you are ordered to undress, no not passion, she wants your pants in the washing machine, so you go the whole hog and totally undress and put it in the washing machine. Only the next door neighbour was looking out her window and got the shock of her life. You can hear her tell her boyfriend, he looks like a gorilla, so hairy, yuk.

So naked you dance and prance around the house putting the rescued washing on all the radiators. While she laughs and tells her mum in Shanghai what Panzi is up too, you hear laughter from Shanghai, just like the penny arcade dummy, from the 60s.

You scour the house looking for your dressing gown, only you cannot find it. She threw it away last week because it looked so tatty. She didn’t tell you that, you should have known already, because she didn’t tell you, so stupid you should have known.

Steam rises throughout the house, it’s like the sauna they used to have at CPNEC. Or the local chippy on  a rainy day. So you sit there decoratively on the leather settee, trying to look alluring, only she laughs even more, Shanghai echoes the laughter.

Finally defeated, you get dressed, in your 2^nd best, but now only dressing gown. She opens all the windows to let the steam out, you draw pictures on the windows and the house mirrors. You sit back on the leather sofa, trying to be alluring in your dressing gown and very hairy legs. She just laughs and says you’ll catch a cold.

The day is over, the washing is dry, some of the wallpaper is pealing behind the radiators, and you have a cold.