The Washing Line

The Washing Line ©

By

Michael Casey

Ok, are you ready? I’ve had a shower, ok a sheep dip, I am big and hairy with lots of nooks and crannies, crannies, not Grannies, are you all deaf, DEAF. If I could hang my body hair on a line to dry then I would, like a Golden Fleece, ok a silvery old man’s hairpiece, no I don’t have a wig, its all soft and silvery. If ever you get me in your bed you can stroke it, MY HAIR.

See you all think one thing when I am saying the other, Gill was right, you are all going up the garden path on your own. I hope Gill is well I’ve not seen her in maybe 10 years. Now did you all take the one hour challenge? Did you write a story called The Washing Line in just one hour. If you did not then STOP, don’t even look at the screen, just walk away, walk away from the keyboard, SECURITY I have an idle journo here, can you come and collect him.

Yes female journalists exist, and without the spacing you have journalistsexist which gives you SEXIST, but I stumbled over that so I put it in, which if you mistype is PUTIN. Ok I’ll stop with the discoveries in mistyping, a guide for dislectics, yes I left it there mistyped just for the clever dicks to bitch about.

There is thought behind these pieces,or do you think I just sit here and rattle them off. And yes Rattlethemoff, is a Russian Nudist and Concert pianist and part time ballet dancer. Which reminds me there is a real ballet dancer in my next novel Tears for a Butcher, but I may never write that as it would take a year. Not unless I can get Nick from the today programme to take dictation, he got plenty from Alex Salmond after all.  

Where was I, being hung out to dry on the washing line, Ronnie Corbett on acid, you are so cruel, he only ever had pear drops, and I am a pineapple chunk kind of guy. See 356 words already, that Editor can go and take a flying leap, after I finish the test piece, write 1000 words on The Washing Line, and he’s making me do it on a typewriter. The one Rupert Murdoch left in The Sun’s safe roof where all the naughty files are kept. So how did our leader at the Daily Sploge find this Michael Casey anyway, the SOB.

So here’s my piece for the editor, and if he doesn’t like it he can give Michael Casey my job and my one inch column.

The Washing Line is a very ordinary thing, its in every back garden, but what is on the washing line is evidence to who we are and what we do. On my washing line there are lots of girls knickers in a multitude of colours, then besides them are my flags, so big in contrast to the girls’ knickers. I do live with 3 girls after all, the wife and our two daughters. My pants decorated the washing line in Shanghai when I first went there nearly 20 years ago. We used them to navigate our way back to the mother in laws house. In fact in Shanghai you have a giant bamboo pole with you bright blue acre size pants hanging from them. Rather like a national flag.

So that is my memory from Shanghai. Looking up and seeing my pants on a pole on the ten floor of the tower block where they lived.

In the olden days people hung their washing on hedges, maybe that’s how the first laundry begun, a farmer’s wife with a steam and a stone, and her husband busy planting hedges as business expanded. They got a bigger stone when the village got bigger. And when the farmer’s own family got bigger they bought a windmill, to make flower but also to hang the washing from the sails on the windmill. Yes Don Quixote was a pain, tilting at the windmills and stealing the washing as his lazy servant Sancho Panza never did the laundry. But Fr.Brain, now Bishop Brain did used to call me Sancho Panza maybe 45 years ago. So I have a soft spot for Sancho Panza, the laundry thief, and now me wishing to be 1% as good as the Author of that book, the book thief not the laundry thief, I got missed up.

Don’t tell the Editor that I sneaked off to the kitchen for a tea, don’t tell Nick on Today either, he’s such a gossip, he’ll tell anybody who cares to listen, why does he always wear ear warmers all the time? Did Alex Salmond buy them for him, it can be cold in Scotland.

I can remember looking out the back bedroom window and see birds on the washing line, watching not part of it, just observing, is the sentence that came to me back then 30 years or so ago. On a washing line you can be a sentry while the other birds have their dinner of words, or is it worms in Michael Casey’s back garden.

Then when the coast is safe you can drop down and eat some words or worms whichever taste the better. As for Totoro she is asleep in/on or under a selection of 4 beds, she’s had dinner with at least 4 different owners. She has two bells and the Best Bitch medal around her neck, the birds would hear her so they are off the menu. Besides our gay neighbours at the bottom of the garden have recently installed fairy lights, so Totoro is intrigued by them, the lights that is.  

Close pegs are very dangerous things that hold your clothes to the washing line. The quality of pegs is not strained, that surfeiting they break and a spring goes in your face and gives you a scratch.

You’ve been scratched by your cat, or is it the wife, your friends all ask as you are down the pub, they examine your face and take photos and put them on FB and Twitter. In an hour it trends, washing line injury, or problems with the washer woman?  

Somebody even rings up local radio. BollocksTalkFM the new radio station for the Islington Crew. Several Sky and BBC Press Preview listen laughing as they listen, drinking green tea in the green room before the Press Preview starts. Thankfully a bottle of Polish Vodka has infused the green tea.

First item on the Press preview, in the Daily Express, front page picture of a washing line. Are clothes pegs dangerous, new EU regulations, are they trying to tie us up with red tape before Brexit, or should we hang them out to dry. The anchor just looks at his watch and says, I use a hair dryer myself.

Well Mr Editor I broke my best finger nail writing this for you and its well over 1000 words. So can I have my one inch column back or are your giving it to this new Napoleon, Michael Casey from Birmingham, the centre of the washing line universe.

our back garden and beyond watch for buzz lightyear