Irish Washer Woman

    Laundry list.  It was on our agenda to wash clothes the last couple of days in Copenhagen.  It didn’t happen.

     We entered Ireland with the clothes on our back and suitcases full of dirty laundry.  Breakfast came with our bed-and-breakfast.  Sort of.  Thirty years ago when we visited the United Kingdom, breakfast was the real thing, eggs boiled scrambled fried or poached; beans; various kinds of toast; stewed tomatoes.

     Not anymore apparently.  Breakfast now means continental breakfast, pastries, bagels, cream cheese, that sort of stuff.  Or something like you will find in many motels in the USA, a toaster, assortment of jellies and jams, some fruit, cereals with milk, coffee and tea.  No waffle maker in this B & B. 

      Fortunately, for me, we had found a small jar of peanut butter in the grocery in Copenhagen.  Wrapped in a plastic bag, it made the trip to Dublin intact.  If we had had to carry our luggage on to the plane, it probably would have been trashed when we went through security.   

      One of the advantages of staying at a B & B is getting to meet the homeowner.  Robin came around as we were eating breakfast.  He knew of only one self-serve laundry in the area.  It was outside at a convenience store-gas station.  He discouraged us from going there.  It was outside.  There was really no place to sit.  We would have to stand outside while our clothes washed and dried.

      Robin said he could show us some laundry services that would do the washing and drying for us.  I had found one on the internet via my tablet.  Robin said he knew right where it was, not too far.  He even offered to drive us there in his car, but we would have to find our way back on the train. 

      I said it would be best for us to go on the train so we would have some idea how to get back on the train.  If he took us right to the place in his car, we would be lost souls when it came to finding our way home, no dropped breadcrumbs to guide us.

      We knew where the closest train station was because we walked past it while searching out our supper the previous evening.  It was five or six blocks away.  The laundry was pretty heavy, so we emptied my wheeled bag and stuffed it in there.  Clicking and clacking down the sidewalk, we went to the train station.

     Riding the train is, to me, preferable to taking a bus.  The train is roomier, nicer, especially if you are carrying a bag.   Train stations don’t move around, are easier to find.  You have to use your boarding card to get into the station, rather than showing a conductor or driver before you get on the bus when your hands are full of stuff.

      Robin confirmed what Google maps told me about the correct station to dismount.  It was only two stops from the station where we boarded.  The laundry was two or three blocks from the train station.  We found it with no problems.

      The lady weighed our dirty clothes.  She took our bag, said we could leave it and not have to lug it around while we waited.  She would put our clean, folded clothes in the bag, which would be ready for us when we returned.  It would be about two hours.

      What was there to do for two hours, we asked.  She pointed across the street intersection, saying there was a print museum just down the block.  We could while our time away there.

      As she spoke, she was making change for the bills I had given her for payment (Ireland uses Euros).  She handed the change in coins to the Goodwife.  “Hey,” I said, “Don’t give it to her!”

      “Oh, just habit,” she returned, laughing.

     “Your poor husband.  Does he even get an allowance?”

      “He gets what he deserves,” she said with a meaningful glance.

      “I think Ireland must be filled with female chauvinists,” I ventured.  There ensued a wide-ranging discussion of politics, Irish, American, world, to the effect that women could probably do better than the men had.

       We departed for the print museum, which was one of the most interesting places we went.  It had old machinery, printing presses going way back.  There were woodcut letters and blocks, inkpads used in the old days, line-o-type machines, all the way up to a rather complex press that was used up into the 1980’s when computers and laser printers put the old mechanical inventions out of business.

      The museum was free.  I’m not sure what supported it, but a group of old guys keep the machines in running shape.  They meet on occasion, maybe weekly or monthly, when they get together and work on the old stuff, sometimes actually printing with some of them.

      The day we visited, there were three or four retired printers on the premises.  One guy was a mechanic who was tapping a new screw hole in the metal of one of the printers.  All of them had made their living in some aspect of the print business.  They were willing to discuss anything with us, not just the printing business. 

      A worry is what will happen to the machines and the history when the old retired guys are no longer around.  Will there be a younger crew willing to come in and learn from the older fellows?  Nobody is showing up, yet.

      Other topics included organic farming (the Goodwife mentioned that I raised organic grain), and of course, politics.  We took our leave of the printers and mounted the stairs.  I thought there would be more printing stuff, but no.  It was a women suffrage collection, highlighting the heroines of the Irish suffrage movement.  It included many editorial-type cartoons.

      Attached to the print museum was coffee shop that seemed to be a gathering place for the locals, including the retired printers.  We partook of a pot of tea and a roll, and our two hours were up plus some.  Time to return to the laundry.

      Our lady brought out my suitcase full of clean folded clothes.  I thanked her.  “I know why you sent us to that museum.  You wanted me to see that suffrage stuff,” I told her.  She apparently didn’t know the suffrage collection sat atop of the print museum.  But she wasn’t taken aback.

    She heartily agreed that I, and every other man, needed to see it.  She then confided us in a bit, saying she was 51 years old and didn’t have much prospect of getting a better job than the one she had.  She was tired, but too young and too poor to retire.

      She didn’t stay down for long.  She asked where we were staying and how we found the laundry.  She said we could walk to our B & B.  “Just go straight down this street and you will come right to the street where your house is.”

      “Straight down the street” means something different in Ireland.  Not very many streets go straight.  You will hit a fork in the road, and you are left with Yogi Berra’s advice, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

     I was fairly certain we could find our way, but I was towing the bag full of clean clothes, so we opted for the train station and the six or seven blocks we knew over clickety-clacking a mile or more.  We had clean clothes and had experienced quite a bit of local color.  We were ready to see something else in Dublin.