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C Richard Miles - Washday Mondays

2014-10-27 0 Dailymotion

In Oxenhope my mind flashed back to past times <br />As, between squat flagstone terraces, I spotted <br />Slack lines of laundry loose-hung over cobbles: <br /> <br />Washday Monday in these steep stone backstreets <br />Would start as copper, dolly-blue and washboard <br />Were ferreted out of dingy cobwebbed backplace. <br /> <br />Each steam-soaked scullery would waft its tart niff <br />Of sharp carbolic out of darkened doorways, <br />Doorsteps scoured moon-bright with white-stone. <br /> <br />And housewives, hair swept up or crimped by rollers <br />Swathed in grubby headscarves tied in slack knots, <br />Would slipper-shuffle out with chintzy peg bags. <br /> <br />With two-pronged wooden pegs hand-carved by Gypsies, <br />They deftly pinned the mangle-dry lank hefty linen <br />On the sun-bleached hemp-rope lines all limply drooping. <br /> <br />Flapping like storm-driven topsails from the masthead, <br />The sheets would sometimes somersault completely <br />To wrap around the rope like loose-rolled carpet. <br /> <br />On frosty mornings still-damp sheets would set hard <br />Stiff as board, trimmed out with silver Christmas glitter <br />And rustle folded, like some draughtsman’s cartridge. <br /> <br />And God forbid that wayward waif, reckless or wilful <br />Who sped too swiftly, pedalling round the corner <br />On his tin-plate tricycle to crash into the washing. <br /> <br />He’d crassly cover the crisp bleached bedding <br />With traces of his gawky mud-pup pawprints: <br />In Oxenhope, the other day, I had that flashback.<br /><br />C Richard Miles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/washday-mondays/

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