For various reasons, I'm having to use a laundrette these days. Their service wash facility to be exact.

Since there are hardly any left in the part of West London I live in, it's a long, dispiriting schlep to the nearest, which is perched at the top of Holland Park road.

There are compensations; it's near to Holland Park, which I'm a near semi-resident of, (at some point, I shall probably just pull a carpet of leaves over me and start sleeping there); and they fold things, shirts, tee-shirts, match socks and ball them up. It goes in there, a huge knot of tired, creased, dirt and distress, and it comes back to me, near pristine. I'm not used to such transformations.