It’s a sure bet that you will not find two people more unfitted to run a business than my sister Fay and me. Even our late mother, our best and possibly our only advocate, had reluctantly to dismiss the pair of us as dreamers. So it was nearer dread than delight when her brother, our uncle, willed to us his precious laundromat.
You may think that running a laundromat would be child’s play. People load their own clothes into the machine and put a coin into the slot. You do nothing. Maybe you make coin change for the odd note or two but what’s so hard about that? The difficulty in this case was that the business was in the inner city in an area that at the time of setting up had been largely light industry. It had been designed to cater for their particular needs with heavy washers, heavy driers, a large commercial boiler, but the light industry had largely fled. The once-clientel had been moved to the suburbs by the rising rates and ground rents. Now the area was largely high-rise shoe-box flats. It was just like Uncle George to saddle us with this liability.
Someday, someone with yet another high-rise in mind will want to pull down the whole block and we will be able to name our price but until then we would have to nurse this out-size geriatric. To sell it now would be to get next to nothing.
It was Fay who turned everything around. I can take no credit. For a start, we operated from nine to five as it had always been. There were still some commercial customers but we also had a few flat dwellers come in. The high ground rents in the central area mean that the flats are miniscule, no place to raise children, and no place to dry washing which is why you tend to see drying racks on their narrow cliff-ledge balconies. We didn’t get much of their custom because both husbands and wives were usually at work during our opening hours.
Fay suggested that we should extend our hours to suit these people. After all there were two of us. If we stayed open, say until ten in the evening, they would be free to come in. We could, one of us, do the dayshift and the other the evening shift and camp over night in the back room. We could swap week about. Of course I argued against it, who ever heard of a laundromat having two shifts? In the end, I reluctantly agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. “For a couple of weeks anyway.”
At first the increased trade was slight. It never occurred to us to advertise. Remember, we were complete tyros. But word got around and gradually things began to look up. Usually, it is both husband and wife who come. Parking is scarce and the area has its share of low-life. It is not the kind of place that men would have their women-folk walk through alone at night.
We bought some couches, admittedly second-hand, and more tables and chairs to accommodate those waiting. Rubbish bins too. With the tables in place some brought their tea with them to eat while they waited for their load to go through but as long as the machines were fed, who were we to complain? Then one of those who brought in his tea shouted us a coffee machine. You can guess that he has to have a coffee with his meal. It is we who supply the coffee and the hot chocolate. It is very much in our interests to provide it for free.
The piano is harder to explain. It was brought suddenly to my attention with three removal men trying to jockey it through our door without scratching. I rushed over to tell them that they had the wrong place but they assured me that they had strict instructions to deliver it to this address. Since Fay is forever doing things without telling me, I had to let them in. Admittedly, I was sure she was off her rocker this time. But, when she came in later, she knew no more about it than I did. Bewildered, we phoned the police but nobody seemed to have lost a piano and no-one has ever owned up. We have among our regulars a number who would dearly love to fit a piano into their chicken coop. It was one of them probably. So it sits there. Our suspects come in, often without the excuse of their washing, and tinkle away with a wide range of ability. And the odd guitar appears at times to be strummed abstractedly as though unaware that there is a captive audience.
I am not the first one to call those flats chicken coops. Our business has become an appendage of those flats, their meeting place. I should have mentioned that they are also too small to entertain. Our evening regulars have even come to lable themselves ‘The Battery Hens.’ I am not sure where that came from but someone brought in a framed cartoon of battery hens, supplied the hanger, supplied the nail, even brought in their own hammer. The only thing they didn’t do was ask for our permission. We wonder who is running this business but the profits are not something to sniff at.