I remember Grandma’s laundry
With a basket made of cane
Lines that stretched, wall to wall
To hang things when it rained.
There used to be a copper
Out where Grandma used to toil
And a stick to lift the clothes out
When the water reached the boil.

Twin tubs made of concrete
With a wringer in between
A wringer in a laundry now
Is hardly ever seen.
Upon a shelf a little box
Of starch called Silver Star,
Kero tins for buckets –
Remember back that far?

A dipper with a handle
To help our Grandma cope
And a little wire basket
With a piece of Sunlight soap.
She used to have a washboard
For scrubbing out the clothes
You must be getting on in years
If you used one of those.

A saucer on the window sill
With bags of Reckitt’s Blue
Making white clothes whiter still
And good for bee stings too.
Sand soap and a scrub brush
For scrubbing every floor.
Some firewood for the copper
In a box behind the door.

A tin roof and some guttering
With a funny sort of sag
And a heap of wooden dolly pegs
In a homemade hessian bag.
And out the back, a clothes line,
Not the kind that spins around
Clothes props held the lines up
Stopped ’em dragging on the ground.

What would Grandma say
If only she could see
That wash-a-matic marvel
Where the copper used to be.
The dryer in the corner
The tubs of stainless steel
Hot water pouring from the taps,
I wonder how she’d feel.

I think that Grandma would approve
The changes made, and yet
There were things in Grandma’s laundry
That I simply can’t forget.