During the recent no sink, poor plumbing debarcle, I have been visiting the local laundrette. Luckily, it's very close, so lugging the bags of colour coded clothes back and forth isn't a huge hardship. I use an orange Le Creuset bag to carry washing - and, no, the irony of using a bag which once carried a tiny, fifty quid omelette pan for laundrette based activities, is not lost on me.
The other day, I left the bag on top of the washing machine, went home, waited about, then returned. In the meantime, a man had arrived. Bearded and somewhat ragged, he looked like a gentleman who uses the laundrette not just for washing but perhaps as somewhere to pass the odd hour, a place to carve out a chunk of the day.
In my absence, he had taken my orange Creuset bag, and placed it on top of his own saggy blue holdall. I had two choices. 1) Let him keep the bag and return home for a new one. 2) Reclaim my bag, even though he seemed like the kind of soul for whom finding a stray bag made it a good day.
I went for option two, and here at home I've had a bad press as a result. "Let the man have his bag," they've been saying. In my defence, I had already made three trips there and back (while those urging for him to keep the bag had made no trips). Still, it was the wrong decision. It probably was worth another trip after all.
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