THE FREEDOM TO BE…

I sought freedom, to liberate myself from a certain thought and habit that had surfaced like a demon during these dark and dour months, when the sky frowned and furrowed its brows and the rain came in starts and stops. The problem was…my washing. In warmer drier months, it’s a breezy easy task. I hang them out on our bedroom balcony. They flap dry in gentle breezes and are sweetened in the morning sun. Oh… how I long for those days when the bees take a long sip of nectar from my tiny mauve rosemary blossoms and sweet honeysuckle. But they’ve gone away to snooze in their warm hives with a whole lot of other furry snoring bees and I’m left with…the washing.

 During the rainy days of January , I spent my mornings dashing out and pegging them on the line when the wind brushed away those grey clouds and the sun shone with such brilliance that I thought it had come to stay. But… NO!!!…A bank of furious dark clouds raced from the horizon, engulfed the sun and pelted down the rain on my clothes. I got fooled and taken in again and again until I decided to dry them indoors, on the radiators where they become stiff and they dried with their creases ironed in. Then the resident engineer walked in and worried about damp and mould and threw the windows open and the wind and cold rushed in.

I read somewhere that to be free, one has to shake off the constraints that keep you shackled. Well… I could let the washing pile up and we could walk about in reeky clothes. Or…I could do what my neighbour does. She lives alone on the top floor and her daughter and her young family on the ground floor with a lovely patch of back garden for the kids to tumble about and screech. Once she hangs out her clothes…they stay there…come rain or shine. In summer they hang over the balcony on a hang-on-drier, for days. In the daytime they hang bone-dry under the sweltering summer sun and when the wind picks up, one or two pieces, hanging loose on a single peg, sail down and collapse on her daughter’s pergola…and stay there. In the evening, they suck up the moisture from the humid air to start all over again the next day. And on those wet days, I spied her washing, hanging out, being rained upon…and she left them there, limp and heavy. I’d like to be a free soul and do just that… but…the resident engineer would rush out and salvage them.

 This brings me to another story, two weeks ago, on a certain damp dank week. It was a Wednesday night and we retired to bed just past the witching hour. I settled my head on the warm pillow and opened a random book, among the many randoms lying in untidy piles on my bedside table. Just as I flicked through the pages of Anya Hindmarch’s When In Doubt Wash Your Hair, the lights went out.

Me: Electricity cut or a short?

The automatic gate in the back garden sometimes short circuits in wet weather. This was enough for him to drag himself out of bed and stomp downstairs to check the switch board. He sleeps in his underwear and went down in his underwear. The lights didn’t come on and I heard him exiting the back door. It was cold and blustery outside and I wondered if he had gone out in his old fashioned undies…not the skirt-like ones, not the boxer shorts but the V-shaped ones that his mother used to buy him and then passed the torch to me. But I wasn’t like his mother. I never bought him new ones even if they had holes or the elastic waistband slackened and hung loosely around his hips. Then one day, he came home walking in a funny manner… He said that while climbing a scaffolding, the undies fell down to the crotch and made it difficult for him to advance. I got him new ones and from that day, whenever he announces …`I’ve only got fallers’…I get him new ones.

The rain was coming down in slants and the top boughs of the bitter orange tree, visible from our bedroom window, were shaking violently with the sudden gusts. There was still no sign of him. I was about to get up and investigate. Just then I heard the back door bang shut, his footsteps coming up the stairs and …there he was…standing before me looking a little shivery…in his T-shirt and white cotton V-shaped knickers. He had gone out to check the electric box in the yard, which looks out into the narrow side road and struggled to put the cover back on.

Me: Did you go out like this?

He: Yes. But I put on my jacket.

I had  got him a modern jacket for Christmas, very stylish that cuts off at the hips.

Me: But what about the rest of you? Just your vraki-knickers?

He nodded his head, laughing.

He: I looked like some sort of an old pervert. Luckily the street was deserted.

Me: You’re lucky the neighbours didn’t see you.

He: So what! I was standing in our yard and…we don’t owe anybody anything.

Yes my friends…if you don’t owe anybody anything…you can stand outside in the dark in your knickers and frighten the neighbours.

So cheers till the next time.