You don't see... PANTS

It was windy today and I saw pants from the window of my second-floor flat - an imposing array of them, flapping in a stiff Edinburgh breeze. I left them out of this photograph in case I was arrested, so you don't see pants. But you do get to see washing in the wind...

I'm not fond of washing - stuffing it into the machine, hauling it out, wrestling with giant, sodden duvet covers. Nor do I approve of windy days - they blow my bicycle in front of buses, and they make my ears ache. Wind is bad, as far as I'm concerned, and when I'm concerned even farther than that then I find that washing is worse. But washing in the wind? It's one of the loveliest sights. It plants a bulb of hope in my moment.

postscript:
The washing and changing of duvet covers is a sub-category of washing so dolorous that it makes me whimper. Simon Armitage (the very good English poet, as in, probably the best English poet alive, damn him) has a poem called 'Alaska' in which the sapping horror of duvet-cover-care is nicely rendered:

...but let me say, girl,
the only time I came within a mile

of missing you
was a rainy Wednesday, April,
hauling in the sheets,
trying to handle
that big king-sizer...