✒️We’d been in the Philippines just twelve days, and my wife rolled about laughing at me in a cruel and mocking way; it was in response to my simple statement.
“I’m going to wash my own clothes.” I announced with a tone of pride and impending achievement.
Tears 🤣 immediately appeared in her eyes and began rolled down the Dragon Ladies face, and between convulsions of mirth, she was having difficulty catching her breath. Was it really that funny, and was she purposely trying to be hurtful?
“You don’t think I can do it, do you? I retaliated, and she laughed some more. Her response was severely damaging to my already bruised ego.
“I do all my own washing back in the UK,” I reminded her.
I was now feeling both 😡 annoyed and if she felt I was inadequate.
“Have you ever done any hand washing of clothing?” She asked, still guffing at me, and I had to shake my head in denial.
“I’ll 👀show you how she said,” and without delay she grabbed a pair of my ready for cleaning under-pants. She wet them and vigorously added a thick smear of soap to them and rubbed. At almost lightning speed, she agitated different parts of the garment against itself repeatedly until she was happy it was cleaned to her high standard. ✔️Her technique was impressive.
“Now you try!” She said, really enjoying the situation.
“HUH, how hard could this be I thought?”
With a fresh pair of dirty pants, I tried to recreate what I had just watched her do without the slightest success.
Wetting them and adding the soap was the easy bit I had no problem with. However, the rapid rubbing which had so impressed me was not.
“It’s not as easy as you make it look,” I truthfully replied. It really wasn’t. Although twice, to her amusement, I painfully smacked my knuckles together as well as bending a finger back.
“This is not good for my arthritis.” I replied, but this was just a crude attempt at vindication as I nursed my poor hands, which were already beginning to throb.
Somehow, I had also got carbolic soap in both eyes, which made them red and left them stinging like hell for hours. I don’t think I give up easily, but today I had made a poor choice of new skills to master. After ten minutes of frustration, I was tied and fed up with the experience and my underpants still omitted a slight odour of tropical sweat.
“There you go said my wife” as she placed all of my dirty clothing next to me in a sizeable heap. There were a dozen pairs of pants; four shirts and five pairs of shorts. This was going to take a while.
In the Philippines, I was used to showering and changing my clothes twice a day, sometimes more frequently, and now I was regretting my hasty decision to enter voluntary domestic servitude. I had been put into my place by my smart arsed wife of twenty-five years.
She stared into my eyes, waiting patiently for me to ask her for advice.
“Okay, so tell me then?” I asked in the driest tone I could muster. She beckoned me to follow her, and like a hungry puppy following a tasty bowl of food, we walked out of our house, and the fifty yards towards a small Nippon hut (native hut made of bamboo)
“Lita does laundry,” said my wife.
The big clue was the four long lines of full of washing, drying and blowing gently in the breeze, which was a bit of a giveaway for most people. However, I’m not most people, but rather a man who rarely notices such things till they are pointed out to me.
“That’s a lot of washing, don’t you think?” I commented, hoping for feedback. “Do you think she has an industrial washing machine?” The Dragon Lady just gave me one of her ‘did you leave your brains behind’ look’s, and she gave her head a little shake of disapproval at my rather stupid question.
Seconds later, a miniature lady who I presumed to be Lita came in to view. She was sitting deeply on her loins in perfect comfort in the way only Filipinos seem to be able to do for hours on end without the slightest effort. She was sitting over a large bowl which looked large enough to drown her if she lost concentration and accidentally fell in. For a small woman she was tough, and beating the hell out of the washing below, and as she did so, small clouds of soap suds flew into the air above. In-between the beatings she used the same impressive high-speed washing technique I’d seen my wife using.
As soon as she noticed us, a huge toothy grin which seemed to run from ear to ear appeared on her face. This was a truly friendly individual of life. My wife articulated a sentence of Cebuano which was far too quick for me to follow or understand. She was presumably asking her to do my laundry.
“Okay Lang,” was her reply, meaning she was happy to do so, and she smiled even wider.
“I will bring them for you later if it doesn’t rain!” She said, of course, if it rained, she wouldn’t be able to dry them. But it didn’t rain, and that afternoon when I returned home, a small and very brown smiling boy with broad gaps where his adult teeth were growing in greeted me. He handed me a large transparent plastic bag which contained my washing.
As he had so few teeth left to go rotten, I gave the boy a lollypop. I took the bag to our bedroom and unpacked my clothes to discover even my underpants had been ironed, and my pants and shorts had a military straight crease ironed into them. My shirt was better pressed than when it arrived in its packaging. Lita had done all of this in two hours, and by hand.
On a small pace of paper in florescent marker ink was written the numbers 103 which puzzled me. Was it there by accident, or perhaps I was now customer 103, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t have to wait long to find out? Almost at that precise moment, the Dragon Lady walked through the door.
“She’s done that well,” she chirped, looking at the neat pile of freshly laundered clothing.
“Do you still want to wash it yourself?” she asked, starting to laugh at me again.
“I wonder how much I owe her?” I was keen to discover because after performing such a superb service, I didn’t want to keep her waiting, nor did I want to risk her sending the bailiffs.
“She just told me, 103 pesos.” Replied my wife.
“WHAT?” I gasped, and I was stunned!
In a condescending tone, and as if I was deaf, she loudly repeated the sum.
“I think you’re going deaf!” said the Dragon Lady, who was delighted at any opportunity to put me down. I couldn’t believe that for such a prestige service she was charging me the unprincely sum of £1.30.
Unsurprisingly, I am now a loyal customer.
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