Stephen Robertson

Slanting Lines

Good vibrations

The Bendix washing machine was already elderly

when my mother, acquiring a newer model, donated

the reject to us for our new home.  Or was it

not until seven years later, the year that her first

grandchild arrived?  I can’t quite recall.  Nor can I now

picture it clearly.  So why does it come to my mind?

A couple of reasons.  One, that it had to be bolted

down to the floor, to prevent it going walkabout,

a perambulation whenever it got to the spin

part of its washing cycle.  The other, the noise

that it made as it spun, a rhythmic staccato juddering

with a touch of syncopation.