Laundry Day

You’d think that doing laundry was a pretty basic task.  Not so. 

It was around 8:00 pm Thursday night, and Ellie and I were movin’ slow.  After the first full week of classes, we were tired out!  We gathered our (several) weeks worth of dirty laundry and hauled it all across the street to the apartment designated for us to do our wash.

This washing machine is a very picky one.  It only likes £1 and 20 pence coins.  We searched everywhere: purses, wallets, pockets, backpacks, behind the washing machine, under the washing machine, in the washing machine.  But no luck.  

We decided to walk down the street to Pembroke College to ask the porter for change.  Porters are magical genie men that have the answer and solutions to any questions or problems we students might have.  They basically take care of the college and everyone it.  Forget your key?  Ask the porter.  Need to know where the Graduate Parlour is?  Ask the porter.  Alligator in your bathtub?  Say it with me, ask the porter.  

The porter stood there very patiently as we counted our change, which took much longer than I’m sure he preferred.  Ellie and I had to thoroughly inspect a few most of every single coin to see how much it was worth.  Eventually we had the right coins, and enough of them, to start the washer. 

But wait.  We forgot about the dryer.  

The dryer is even picker than his friend Mr. Washing Machine.  Dryer only likes 20 pence coins.  Again, we searched.  And again, we came up short.  We didn’t want to go back and bother the porter.  We couldn’t quite tell if the comments he made were grumpy ones, or if he was just trying make a joke.  We don’t understand British humor.

I remembered going to an express grocery store my first day in Cambridge and thought that they would be able to help us in our desperate situation.  I also thought it was right around the corner from our flats.  (Wrong—my directional instincts are seriously lacking.)  We started in the opposite direction of the porter’s lodge, huddled under Ellie’s little black umbrella.  Oh, that English rain!  We passed a homeless man, and Ellie thought about doing a trade with him to get us those much-needed 20 pence coins.  We decided against that plan.

We kept ourselves entertained on our little detour, though.  The entire walk, we practiced our English accents in an attempt to get them to stick.  We really want to leave here with accents.  We channeled the entire Harry Potter cast.

Side story:  When we were in Edinburgh, Ellie was working the Hermione accent like a pro.  We were walking through the city center when we passed some cape-clad, wand-bearing wizards advertising Harry Potter tours.  Ellie excitedly took a flyer and continued walking up the street.  But she stopped, turned around to our wizard friends, and said like Emma Watson herself, “I’m Hermione Granger.”  Then just walked away. So great!

Anyways.

Eventually we realized that we had gone in a complete circle.  Thankfully, we were in a part of town that we walk though every day on our way to class.  We knew exactly where Sainsbury’s was—the big papa grocery store.  When we asked the cashier for change for our 1 pound coin, she looked at us like we had just asked her to massage our feet.

But success was ours!  We made our way back home through the rain, all the way talking like proper English ladies.

Ah, the detours we take for clean clothes.