the laundry

I’ve already mentioned our little houses were originally built for workers of the nearby Lakeland Laundry. The laundry took in washing in large quantities. I think it mainly catered for commerce like hotels, hospitals etc rather than individuals. It was like a small factory with a tall brick chimney. For us it was an exciting playground when the workers had gone home. There was a tarmacced car park where we could play “three and in” football against the loading bay door. A grassy wilderness where we could play “hide and seek” and other made up adventure games and there were all sorts of interesting items that had been discarded and thrown into the grass at some stage.

There was an element of danger about it that excited the small boys of the 1950’s and 60’s that today, would send the soft “nanny state” parents and health and safety pundits into a nervous breakdown. There was a legend that somewhere there was a well containing acid. If you fell into it, you would dissolve in seconds and even your bones would melt and no-one would ever know what had become of you, just your teeth would survive. It scared the crap out of me but didn’t deter us from playing there. We did eventually find an underground tank of some kind with a metal cover. You could just see into it from the ends and it was indeed full of liquid. This had to be it and we would drop sticks and stones into it expecting some kind of frantic bubbling and noxious gases to be created. It never did but maybe we needed to find something more organic like a cat or small dog to drop in there. We drew the line at that experiment though.

The other danger was the transport manager who we knick-named “Mr Bullyman” on account of his aggressive manner. He had the most severe “short back and sides” haircut I had ever seen, slicked back with Brylcreme and would shout and ball at us if he caught us anywhere on laundry property. So whenever we played there, we had to keep an eye out for him. He would emerge from some dark corner, and shout and rant at us. We would make a run for it and our lithe young bodies would always ensure we could outrun this red faced, overweight, middle-aged demon. One year, there was an old window frame lying in the long grass just over the fence from our houses. My friend Barry and I decided it would be great fun to throw stones over the fence and try to smash all the glass panes, which we eventually achieved. One day we were playing on our patch when Bullyman collared us. “Have you smashed this lot” he barked. “No” we lied, shaking in our scruffy boots. “Well if I catch ‘em I’ll have the police onto ‘em” he snarled. He ranted on about how they’d end up in prison and somehow I knew he knew it was us and it would only be a matter of time before the coppers were handcuffing me and Barry and carting us off to prison. Our parents would obviously have no idea where we had disappeared to. We went and hid in my room for about an hour just to throw them off the scent.

We survived the ordeal for more laundry adventures, like the time the tall chimney had scaffold placed around it for repairs and Barry scaled it to the top while I kept watch for his mum. There was the time when we found one of the disused vans and climbed in to play at “laundry drivers”. Those vans had no ignition key, just a knob you pulled to start it. It must have been left in gear (we didn’t know anything about gears and clutches). We pulled the knob thinking nothing would happen and the van jerkily started off down the car park. I was petrified but my big mate Barrry (probably about 11 years old then) had it all under control and successfully steered us to the abrupt safety of a big grassy embankment. We got out and ran like hell to the safety of our “Nazi” den. “The den” - now that’s another story.