I'm down at the local laundromat hoping that no one notices that I'm not wearing a bra. What with one thing and another I completely ran out by the time I made it down here.
There's a shaggy-haired man with a gold ring on each finger of his right hand which is so distracting that you almost completely miss his atrophied left hand, folded delicately back against the wrist. He hauls his clothes out of the drier, whistling and hoicks the washing basket up onto his hip with an easy movement. A gold tooth glints as he smiles at me.
A gentle giant of a boy is reading Robert Rankin and sneaking furtive, bespectacled glances about himself as the small woman who must be his mother keeps up a constant muttered stream about the quality of the machines, the state of the facilities and what dinner is likely to contain.
People wander in and out.
An upper middle class couple who have fallen on hard times sip their McCappuccinos as he reads the paper and she pats her garish neon-red dye-job.
A girl returns to claim her orphaned washing and rants to anyone who will listen about whoever dared to take her things out of a machine and dump them on top of it.
My machines finish.
One of my socks has gone missing - a sacrifice to the God of communal laundry.
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