Laundrettiquette

"After you…"
"Oh no, YOU have the table – I‘ll fold at home!"
"Well if you’re sure… Oh! is that your vest on the floor?"

Yes, that’s just how it is at Merryville Laundrette – why not Come On Down for an unforgettable day out with new friends and the chance to win big, BIG prizes! (Maybe not the Prizes). Nevertheless, it’s THE place to be with your Festerings. 

No longer the clutch of darkly muttering elbows you might remember from youthhood, battling to the death over washer and dryer - the Laundrette of today is a gathering of gay banter and sordid gossip, of crosswords, books and magazines and learning; a place where all ages and assets can
commune. 

(So far, this young man from the ancient jeans advert hasn’t graced our laundrette with his boxers, but the other guy's a regular…)

And Pchaw to 24-hour supermarkets – this is the place to meet your new truelove – I mean, where better to gauge the cut of someone's jib than in the flourish of their fripperies?   

George and I have rediscovered the Shared Laundering Experience since moving to a house with room for neither dryer nor clothes-horse nor garden line. (I cannot describe our jubilation when we managed to squeeze the Washer in).

But what would be the Etiquette these days?

Should one simply bag a dryer, sit sighing extravagantly before it, then empty and charge off to do Vital Business? Or determinedly strike up conversation with the person gazing comatose at a notice about dangerous overloading…  whinge companionably perhaps about the swine who’s gone gallivanting off and left stuff in a machine, rendering it unuseable?

(In the old days it would have been emptied and fought over by everyone waiting -  now that’s probably against health and safety).  

Well I needn't have worried!  The Laundrette of today is very like the Lavoir of yesteryear - our next-door neighbour in France had one the bottom of her garden and up to the very Sixties,

everyone in the vicinity would commune to donk their laundry in the stream and bash it against the stones.  And a jolly hat was had by all.

Of course the handy and very popular rocky beach here provides a similar facility – just as well, because from easter onwards it's harder to find a Laundrette Machine not full of hotel sheets than it is a Parking Space in the eye of a camel.  (It is Written...)
　

So is Party-Laundering for you?  Would you like to rid yourself of calcium-buildup floods in your kitchen, or the machine that bursts into flames on an overnight Cotton Extraspin?

Perhaps forget clothes-washing completely, private or public:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2316679/The-shirt-wear-100-DAYS-washing-ironing.html

Could you be tempted by this "...shirt you can wear for 100 days without washing or ironing!"?  (Yes we know about backpacking, but this one's fragrant at the end).  You might be slightly bored with it by then...
On the left, we see a man vigourously testing its sweatiness.


Or does the answer lie in those disposable paper dresses of yore?  Just wear and chuck when the wear and tear got too pronounced - they were like crunching around in crepe wrapping and they were FAB!

(That's very like me on the left).  Mine beloved own was an orange culotte dress.  Mercifully I can't recall how many wears it had before I could bring myself to chuck.