Hanging Out the Washing

Broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme in November 2020

Hanging out the washing is my special moment  – don’t laugh please!  It’s something I really enjoy. It’s best in spring and summer but even in winter on a fine day I love to get the washing out on the line even if just for a few hours.  When the machine buzzes to tell me it has finished its work I take a break from whatever I’m doing, pile the wet clothes into the washing basket and head out to the garden.  First get the line up; it hangs coiled up on a post with a ring at the end, which I attach to a hook some distance away on the side of the garden shed which gives a good ten metres of line; get the bag of pegs from the shed and get busy pegging.  I amuse myself by deciding how to arrange the clothes, towels and pillow cases; sometimes by colour: all the blue items together perhaps, graded from pale blue to dark, then the red through to pink and to apricot. I know it’s silly and I have to laugh at myself. Socks in pairs – of course there’s usually one or two orphan socks. When that’s all done, I fetch the pole with the hook on the end – its leaning against an apple tree - to hoist the line higher, catch the best of the breeze and the weak sunshine. Then, time for a brief pause. It’s nice standing here in the garden, which is not big but surrounded on two sides by woodland, so even in winter there’s a bit of birdsong: if the cawing of crows or the cackling of pheasants counts as birdsong.  I think of wartime spy stories and of messages encoded in a washing line.  Perhaps the socks hung up by their heels, instead of by the toes, or some other special arrangement of the washing, indicated that a rendez-vous was on for that night. Quite often we get the rumble of the local Spitfire overhead giving people joyrides; we are only twenty miles from Biggin Hill. Other times it’s a noisy helicopter clattering overhead and spoiling the peace:  I always wonder who these people are who seem to use helicopters for commuting. 

I’ve always rather enjoyed the interlude of hanging out the washing; a break from other tasks, a chance to let the mind wander; but to admit as much in normal times would have risked being branded a ‘sad person’.  Now in these strange times I’m happy to own it as one of lockdown life’s simple pleasures.