Somewhere around the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, most likely when this house was built, a Hills Hoist clothes line was embedded into concrete in the back garden of the cottage I now call home.  A Hill’s Hoist is an Aussie icon – a rotary clothes line first invented in 1945 and now sold world-wide. I think this one still has all the original parts.  Certainly it was well decorated with rotted wooden pegs still attached to a mould-covered wire clothes lines by lumps of rust that were once the peg springs. 

I had made the suggestion to the owner of the house that I would be more than happy if the Hills Hoist could be knocked down and removed.  I could put a plant pot on the concrete, but even if it was left in its unusable state I could convert it into an arbour for growing grapes and dragon fruit.

Today, amidst much swearing, the owner and a friend fixed the Hills Hoist.  They left the green saggy wire and the rotted pegs, but they managed to fix the mechanical bit that allows the hoist to be …  well…  hoisted high, and they proudly called me out to the garden.

Now – I am very short; I don’t quite make 5ft.  And I have two arms that don’t work too well, and there’s a plan for surgery on my shoulders sometime in my near future.  How do I tell these two tall guys who managed to fix a 70 year-old clothes line, that I can’t reach it.  I just couldn’t do that to them.  Especially when the fixing had involved so many magical incantations – aka swear words.  Words carry power and these ones, obviously, were very powerful – they got the damn thing working again!

Right now I am sitting at my computer trying to pluck up courage to go and bring my washing back in.  It’s about to rain.  I’d spent ages scrubbing the green gunk off the wire and smashing the welded-on pegs whilst doing my best to ignore my complaining shoulders, but that was just the start. I’d then I’d hung my laundry on the hoist – because, for some horribly synchronistic reason, I just happened to have a load in the washing machine ready to put to dry on my low, easy-reach, clothes airer – which would also be out of the rain.

I must admit that the clothes did dry a whole lot faster on the Hills Hoist than they would have on my small airer, but was it really worth it?  And will I carry on using that Hills Hoist?

Not a friggin’ chance!!