Laundry (or Llaundry, for welsh readers)

I've been living in my apartment for a year (from tomorrow) and I go through phases where I don't like it. There's something strange about the building; I think it was originally a hotel of some kind and the apartments do have a vaguely hotelish character to them (there's a vestigal slot on the wall as you come in to my apartment where, I assume, you'd put your keytag to operate the lights and whatnot). About half the apartments in the building are in fact let out as serviced apartments, and so the inhabitants of the building fall neatly into either of two categories: permanents (like me) and transients. The transients are usually european (there seems to be a bit of a skew towards eastern and southern europe), we never get north americans. I don't mind the vaguely hotelish character of the place - it makes it seem a bit more like something out of a novel, and besides, I've had some of the great experiences of my life in hotel rooms.

The place does have an aural quirk - as you get out of the elevator on my floor and stand in the hallway, you can hear quite clearly what's going on in each apartment. It's very disconcerting. Once I'm in my apartment I can't hear anything, it's just when you're in the hallway. This used to worry me quite a bit.


My apartment's on the top floor, overlooking a little park. It's very light and fairly quiet. That's why I like it. I lived once in a very dark apartment and it nearly drove me around the twist. At the bottom of the building is a coffee shop which people who live around here usually call 'the lesbian coffee shop' but it's not. It was at some point in the past, and the name's stuck. Everyone knows it's not, but we still call it that. I think it appeals to our longing to live in a raffish demimonde sort of place. There's a reason we're here, not Mosman. When I first moved here the guy who then ran the lesbian coffee shop took an instant dislike to me (maybe just to save time?) I still don't know what I did wrong. But I've outlasted him now, he's gone somewhere else - prison, i hope, in New Zealand - and the new people are quite agreeable.

The building has a shared laundry in the basement, student-style. I don't have a particular problem with that as a concept, but some people don't seem to get it. There are two washing machines and three dryers. The washing machines take 30 minutes, and it's written very clearly in great big letters. (You can see where this is going, I know.) So people put their stuff in, leave and.... don't come back!

Here's the quandry. I go down to do my laundry. I have a very busy life and I don't need extra complications. Sometimes I get down there, the machines are busy.. fine. I wait, come back later (or just go and buy new underwear, it's easier). But sometimes the machines are cold and idle.. then when you lift up the lid, they're full of clothes! I overthink things, so I start to wonder. Has the machine just finished like a second ago, in which case for me to huffily take it all out and put it somewhere would seem unreasonable, prissy... weird? I notice as I think this through that it's women's underwear and stuff and I don't want some angry bint coming in and accusing me of being a pervert (which I'm not, or at least not in that way).

So I leave it.. then I come back 15 or 20 minutes later. It's still there! I start imagining the conversation that will occur when I start to put the clothes somewhere else and the woman comes in:

her: oi.. what are you doing?
me (defensivey): i'm emptying the washing machine.. there was stuff in it.. i wasn't sure...
her: but i was just about to come down and do that, how dare you..
me: well how was i to know you were 'just about to come down'? what if you were another hour? is there some point at which you'd consider it ok for me to do this? or is it an ironlcad rule that noone can mess with your stuff even if you leave it there all afternoon?

Luckily I've never had to have this conversation, I suspect I'd play it very badly. Must go....dryer time!