A little bit of wind

The wind blew my laundry away. Not off, not down, not spreadeagled on my nearby parked car. It blew it away. I can`t find it anywhere.

It was a particularly windy night - not a typhoon (never a typhoon: I`m beginning to doubt whether they happen at all) - but I didn`t fear for my washing. Why should I? It had been out there over a week, and no harm had come to it. A lot of rain, a tiny bit of sunshine, many cars driving past, but no real harm. I`d even sniffed it yesterday morning to see if it was rotting, but it wasn`t: it smelled, actually, quite pretty (in a green, rainy season kind of way, rather than a clean kind of way).

My complacency in the strength of my clothes pegs, however, was unfounded. All that was left this morning was a single drying up cloth: hanging - exhausted and sad - on its solitary peg. Why didn`t the wind want me? it asked me as I stood in front of it, confused and staring at the sky again, and I had no answer apart from I don`t know, but I don`t really either. Of all the things hung out to dry, the one thing I can replace with ease is a goddamn drying up cloth. And I don`t even use them very often. I normally just let things dry of their own accord. Even if it takes weeks. Which it does. Especially when it rains all the time.

I am now haunted by a strange sense of the supernatural. No matter how hard I think about it, I can`t work out how the wind unclipped an entire basket full of washing - including a pair of black trousers - and sent it into the air: up and over the roof of my house and the houses forming a little pen all around it. Especially not wet ones, because wet black trousers are extremely heavy. A part of me now hopes that they are circling the globe - on their own, strange, black trouser adventure - but another part of me is extremely irritated. I did actually need to wear them today. Them and at least one pair of my remaining three knickers, who clearly hopped into the black trousers` pockets and went with them.

There`s no point in crying over vanished washing, though, so I shall simply continue to walk up and down outside my house on windy nights, waiting. What is it they say? If you love something, let it go. If it loves you, it will come back. And I really did love that particular batch of laundry. So I shall just be patient and hope - against all hope - that one day the wind brings it back to me.

And in the meantime, I shall make do with my drying up cloth. Which is still hanging outside, in the rain.

I wouldn`t want to stop it from adventuring if it wants to, after all.