caddyman | Smut

It’s not pixie dust, but it keeps raining down on me from somewhere. At the end of last week I think it was, we found smears of what looked like black soot on one of my tee shirts when I got home. I don’t think I had been on a tube train at the time, but right now I can’t remember. Anyway, I put the tee shirt in the wash and that was that.

On occasion over the years, I have had the same thing happen, usually on light clothing and often when I have been on a train above or underground. It’s particularly odd since it’s getting on for fifty or so years since steam trains were phased out on surface trains and probably nearer a century since they were phased out underground. I don’t smoke any more, so it’s not me, either. I haven’t had a fall of soot for quite some time, now.

Last night we noticed more sooty smears on my pale green chino jacket after we came home on the train. I still have no idea where they came from, but they meant that I had to dig out my other jacket for this morning, which luckily, I had dry cleaned a few weeks ago.

In the parade of shops down by Totteridge & Whetsone Tube Station, there is a dry cleaner’s shop. It may not be the best in the area, but it is very convenient, so I use it. I took my chino jacket in this morning along with the tweed jacket that I have been threatening to get cleaned since I stopped wearing it earlier in the summer. It’s spent the past three or four months draped over a chair, gently fizzing in the heat and accusing me of dry cleaning indolence. It has a point. Anyway, it’s there for a scrub and brush up, too, so both jackets can treat it as a spa experience for clothing and get the most out of it while gossiping. Jackets are notorious gossips.

The thing is though, the woman who runs the dry cleaner’s is a foreigner; I think she may be from Eastern Europe somewhere, but quite where defeats me. I’d like to say Transylvania since she looks a bit like Morticia in transition to becoming Grandma Addams. She has the shape of the former, but the colouring of the latter. She is also very abrupt in her manner and has the strangest pronunciation and accent: ”Zo, two jarkets. Dhey ouill be reddich¹ on Ouedeneshday. Fiv-deen pounce, police.”²

Actually I made that last bit up, I pay the ransom when I get the clothes back.

It is most disconcerting; I hope the jackets enjoy their holiday.

¹As in oui and loch respectively.

²If you couldn’t translate, allow me: “So, two jackets. They will be ready on Wednesday. Fifteen pounds, please”.