Substack diary no.165: Wednesday, 27th. May 2026

Another sunny and warm day in south Devon but thankfully, for me at least, with slightly lower temperatures. The recycling bins are in – glass/cardboard, plastic/metal, paper and food waste – the fish are watered and fed, although how they survive in my murky pond I do not know. The washing machine is well on its way through a hot wash; the only time I set the dial for 90 degrees rather than the usual 30 or 40 is for rubbers – and they need it!

Rubbers? I say that without thinking and then shortly afterwards I remember that many years ago I came to realise that most people don’t know what ‘rubbers’ are, at least in the laundry items sense. Back in the 1970s I worked for many years at a laundry in Torquay – Devon Cleaners & Launderers as they were known then. They are still around today but the ‘factory’ has moved to Newton Abbot.

You may not think it but it was hot sweaty and hard work, and most days I did 13-hour shifts, often working on a machine called a ‘calendar’. Imagine a giant machine with twelve rollers each the width of a hotel ballroom carpet, with hotel sheets winding their way up, over and under each roller until the hot water was squeezed out of them, steam rising out of the machine and sun beating down through the glass roof overhead. I did not enjoy it.

Anyway, rubbers: what are they? Essentially tea towels, dishcloths, floorcloths – anything that ‘rubs’ to clean basically. Very dirty, very smelly – and always washed separately. The job I disliked the most was to extract rubbers from giant wooden wheelie-bins and load them into giant metal washing machines. Getting the dirty linen from the part of the building where the trucks pulled in involved ‘blowers’ – powerful jets of air that sucked sheets, table cloths, rubbers – through huge zinc tubes suspended from the ceiling and into bays next to the bank of machines.

I suffered Bell’s Palsy when I was a teenager – a form of stroke – and I have always been certain that it was those blowers – and goodness knows what detritus suspended in the air – that was the cause.

Anyway, I digress, which I am apt to do when I sit down in the morning with my diary. I am very glad that the washing machine is on and that no blowers, calendars or stroke-inducing machinery is involved!