i want to...

I want to do a wool-wash.

I do not have my own washing machine so every time I want to do laundry, which is about once a week I put all my dirty clothes and linen and towels and everything into a huge, blue IKEA bag, jump on my bike and cycle the short distance to the laundry mat. However, because I have only the laundry of one person (mind you one very messy and laundry producing person) I hardly ever have enough things to fill up one of the industrial machines – even the smaller ones – and hence tend to resort to short cuts that would give my mother a heart attack, but which enable me to spend a bit less on this necessary activity of producing clean things to wear.

Due to this, also special washes, such as a gentle wool programme always have to wait weeks to happen. Last time I did my little escapade to the heaven of clean clothes and was watching my shirts jump around in the dryer I got a sudden urge and desire to do wool wash.  I wanted to collect all my woollen socks, mittens, hats, jerseys and scarves, wash them and hang them out to dry in the spring sun on my balcony. I would then take all fresh scenting pieces of clothing, fold them nicely and put them in boxes.

Boxes.

I then started dreaming about cardboard boxes. Every night my sleep has been disturbed by boxes of different shape and size, all filled with more or less nicely packed items of my meagre possession.

In addition to the weird desire of doing a wool wash and the never-ending boxes I am jealous of people doing manual labour. Last night at the cinema I was fascinated by the oil workers of the beginning of the last century, especially their dirty clothes that screamed out loudly the idea of productive work.  I want to do few days of work that makes me physically tired and gives me a reason to put my feet up at night and see the result of my efforts. And I want to wear old tracksuit bottoms and a scruffy t-shirt and tie my hair up so that it stays out of the way.

I think all this means that it is time to move.