Laundry was definitely not us

Castlehill was furnished with a washing machine - of sorts. It was the same kind my family had when I was a kid - my mother's pride and joy (it still worked after my sister plugged it right through the label with a 22 rifle slug - but that's another story). Ours in Castlehill was a mixed blessing. It would stop working - either in whole or in parts - for no discernible reason. One day it had given up the ghost (again) and we thought there might be something gumming up the works so we got a coat hanger to make a fishing device and from the spinner part removed several green, slimy socks - must have been years in the making. Some friends who had stopped in for tea took one look at what we were doing and beat a hasty retreat.

When the spinner didn't work we had to drag out an old hand-powered ringer we found in the old barn. Then - drying was the fun part. If it wasn't bucketing down rain, or blowing hard enough to snatch the clothes off the line and carry them off to the Black Isle, we could hang them out on lines strung beside the house. This was often complicated by the pet sheep we had visiting in our garden, whose digestive systems were working quite efficiently thank you. Dropping the edge of a sheet or a sock on the ground meant that we would have to face the *!#$% washing machine again. So mostly the wet laundry was hanging in strategic locations around the house - usually strung on a wooden rack blocking one source of heat or another. We lived in a miasma of wet wool - inside and out.