HANGING THE LAUNDRY LEAVES ME HIGH AND DRY

After years of leaving damp clothes dangling about the house, Rab makes the bold decision to attempt to get to grips with the rotary dryer in his garden

Here’s something else I’m rubbish at: drying clothes. I don’t have a spin dryer as such, though there’s a 10-minute spin setting on the washing machine that birls my duds around hither and yon to little effect.

Then I put them on a foldable airer in the kitchen where they take ages to dry.

Recently, though, I noticed something: there is what I believe is called a rotary dryer standing in the garden.

Indeed, I’d a vague memory of trying it out on first arriving here, but the wooden pegs were so decrepit they fell to bits, and my clothes ended up on the ground.

I could have bought more pegs but have better things such as pies and whisky to spend my money on, so – characteristically, I’m afraid – I let things slide.

Latterly, though, stung into action by slightly damp socks, I began a conveyor belt system of taking selected items from the dryer in the kitchen and toasting them on the – no, madam, not the grill – the towel drier in the bathroom.

However, with the recent hot weather, the rotary dryer in the garden started calling me.

Indeed, half-folded in, with its arms up diagonally, I conceived the idea that it looked like a work of art, with its wires seeming

diaphanous at a distance or even, from a certain angle, like the skeleton of a Viking ship.

You say: “Rab, you are talking mince, man.” Well, maybe. But put it this way: I don’t know much about rotary dryers but I know what I like.

Before investing in pegs, I also had to overcome the old prejudice that a man in my position cannot be seen putting his clothes outside to dry.

Some people just let their pants flap willy-nilly for all to see. It’s disgraceful.

But then nobody but me can see the dryer hidden among the trees, just yards from the neglected vegetable plot (fed up with it; I put

berry plants in and they came, as per, to nothing, while a load of tatties from last year have sprouted up again; I didn’t want tatties; I wanted gooseberries).

I cannot pretend that I’ve fully mastered the rotary

dryer. Nor do I know what the rotary means. Is it meant

to rotate? Load of nonsense.

Once or twice, it has clammed up on me, leaving my habiliments crushed in the middle or deposited on the grass.

But I’m fairly happy at the situation. The robin, I must say, looks a bit baffled. Perhaps he is thinking: ‘There goes the neighbourhood. I can remember when this was all fields.’

But he’ll just have to thole it. I can’t be living my life according to the dictates of wildlife.

I like to think that drying my clothes outside is kinda healthy and organic, ken? It’s not so good when the weather changes, mind. And it’s always changing here. Guaranteed if I go out with an anorak on, it’ll become dry and sunny.

If I forget my rainwear, the heavens will open. Everyone else gets it right. Am I missing out on some government meteorological memo? In the meantime, come rain or shine, I shall carry on living my life by pegging out.

I COULD HAVE BOUGHT PEGS BUT I HAVE THINGS SUCH AS PIES AND WHISKY TO SPEND MY MONEY ON

It was a damp pair of socks that led to Rab experimenting with the notion of drying clothes outdoors, given his poor spin cycle.