Whose pants are these?

We went to the laundrette today. We've been putting it off since we got here; at first it was snowy outside and then it got rainy and it's just such a long walk that I couldn't bring myself to go. But after a while the laundry basket started to overfill and began to look like a small fabric mountain that might well topple over whilst I was brushing my teeth or something and then I'd be stuck under a pile of grimy clothes until Ben came home to rescue me. So added to the fact that Ben had run out of underpants (I hadn't - thanks to Alana) I did actually make a run last week, but didn't even manage to make a dent in the pile of clothes requiring attention.

So we packed up both of our traveling bags with dirty clothes and hung them off the handles of Ben's bike as though it was a packhorse and made the trek. We were going to wait until later on this evening to go as midday on a Sunday tends to be the laundrette's busiest time, but Ben got itchy feet and wanted to Get Stuff Done, so we decided to take our chances. When we got there I thought we'd done well because there was only three or four people, and it would have been alright, had not the young couple who must have got there just before us have bagsied no less than SEVEN of the twelve washing machines and were taking their time about even turning them on.

I think of myself as a relatively patient person but there are a few things that properly get my back up, and two of those things are rudeness and stupidity. Not only had these people stuffed their things into seven of the washing machines, but they then faffed around for a while getting the tokens, and then wandered off to get the powder. Whilst I was waiting for a machine to become free, getting more and more irate, I grumbled to Ben.
"Calm down," he said. "Perhaps they've never been to the laundrette before."
"Well, maybe," I retorted. "But it's just basic common sense not to take up so many machines and then leave them without even turning the bally things on" (I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse, and I wish I was half as eloquant as Bertie Wooster. Instead I'm going through a phase of peppering my speech with Wooster-isms, like 'Bally well' and 'G. and Tonic' and 'Well if that doesn't just take the giddy biscuit!'). I also said some other things, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't be able to understand neither English nor Wodehouse but were probably getting the gist. Whilst they were willywallying around doing not much and being useless, one of the other washing machines finished its cycle, the owner of the clean laundry inside it managed to empty it, I filled it up with some of our clothes, and it was already washing away happily before they even managed to turn one of the seven they had comandeered on. Baring in mind that we had roughly three weeks of washing and still only used three machines I don't even know where they found enough clothes to take up seven machines.

Then they left. Ben, who had gone off in search of change, managed to get back as they were trying to drive out the car park, and he said that they were just as bad at driving as they were at doing laundry, which was comforting.

We managed to get all of our things in various washing machines quickly and efficiently and we'd already got one batch in the dryer before they got back. I then took great pleasure in taking up four dryers for all our clothes in the hope that they might learn something from it. I don't know whether they did, but Ben and I got our revenge anyway.

"Who's pants are these?! They aren't mine!" cried Ben, brandishing a grubby pair of white(ish) y fronts that he'd found as we sorted through our now dry clothes and giggling. "Ew!"
We laughed and put them to one side, just as the clueless couple pottered over to put some of their clothes in the dryer next to ours. After setting it going they wandered off again to put the rest of their washing in the big bank of dryers round the corner.
I was still quite annoyed at them so I had a bit of a grumble to myself whilst folding our laundry which Ben overheard. He patted me on the shoulder and peered round the corner.
"Quick! They're not looking!"
"What?" I asked, never the first to catch on.
"The pants! Put them in their dryer!"
I looked at the pants and then at the dryer.
"I can't do that! They'll come back!"
"No, they're putting all their clothes in the other dryers - quickly!"
So I did it. I put a pair of clean - albeit greying - underpants in amongst their clothes and it was one of the funniest things I've done in my whole life.
"You've gone bright red!" Ben told me, amused at my fit of giggles.

I really wanted to stay and watch their reaction - "Quoi? Quoi est la paire de gris sous-vêtements fait ici?!"

Brilliant.

In other news Ben is pretty pleased with himself because whilst peeling the potatoes he just found one that looked a bit like a bum.