Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Our Beautiful Launderette 
11 New Street, Lymington




Kathryn left today, but not before she and I went over to the church again and found Alice's grave. We also discovered a bit of a mystery. Kathryn said that when she got up this morning, the two clocks on the church steeple were synchronized, but an hour later, one of them had fallen quite far behind -- something close to half an hour. Later, they were synchronized again, but not for long. I witnessed the phenomenon myself. I suggested that perhaps one of the clocks has a lazy minute hand. Since we didn't know whom to ask about it, we decided to leave it in the realm of mystery. (The floors in our hotel creak most dramatically, and our wardrobe doors keep coming open, both of which phenomena we have attributed, tongue in cheek, to a ghost -- so perhaps our ghost wanders over to the church once in a while, just for fun.)  Shrugging our shoulders, we walked down the street and spent a few minutes in an antique shop that we had noticed yesterday, and then we said our good-byes -- until next year.














Now. You think I'm kidding about the beautiful launderette, right? I'm not. I lost track of how long it took us to find the launderette, how many miles we drove. It seemed like such a simple thing. We had over two weeks' worth of laundry. We could have had it washed at (by) the hotel, but that would have involved a bank loan -- 6 pounds for a pair of jeans, 6 pounds for pajamas, one pound-fifty for each pair of socks, etc.. So we decided to go to a launderette. There was no launderette in Lyndhurst, so we went to Romsey. There was no launderette in Romsey, so we came home for lunch. Then we went to Brockenhurst. There was no launderette in Brockenhurst, so we went to Lymington, and there we found this beautiful launderette. Little more than an hour later, we had three bags full of clean laundry. It was a miracle -- or, at least, it felt like one.

As long as we were way over in Lymington, we decided to go see the sea again, so we drove to Keyhaven. Several times along the way, we had a look at the angry sea. It didn't look the least bit inviting. When we got to Keyhaven, though, we  found this amazing man. He was kite surfing. When we first saw him, he was creating such a spray, we thought he was on some sort of powered board, so we stopped to see what it was. As we watched, he suddenly shot up out of the water and flew past us, then landed on the water again and sped off, powered, as we could now see, only by the very strong wind.  I tried for about ten minutes to catch a shot of him when he was airborne, but I couldn't do it. My camera (or the photographer) simply wasn't fast enough.

Now we're back at home, tired, spending a quiet evening.

3 comments:

The Bug said...

Ooh I wonder if I would have the courage to kite surf? Maybe back in the day I would have tried, but then again there was the time I failed MISERABLY at hang gliding (I couldn't for the life of me make myself horizontal in the air - my legs would hang down every time I tried).

Sandra Leigh said...

Heh. I once tried water skiing, and that defeated me. I don't think there was such a thing as kite surfing, back then, but if I couldn't get my bum up off the water to water ski, I wouldn't have a hope of kite surfing.

Linda said...

After that trudge to find the Launderette, no wonder you are resting... however, nothing like clean laundry as long as it doesn't cost you a vacation arm and a leg.

loved the part about the ghost playing with the church steeple. LOL!

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