Line of work

A trip over to Shepherd’s Bush was the order of the day for a nice easy mission installing a new washing lane for Mrs S. Or so it would appear for the listing.

Mrs S lives on the 3rd floor and her washing line, which was a very old and worn piece of rope, was strung from a back window to a very tall post at the end of the garden belonging to the ground floor flat…

Mrs S’s suggestion was to use her ladder to climb the back wall into a neighbour’s garden to borrow their (much longer) ladder - with permission of course - and use this to climb to the top of the pole to take down the old rope and string up the new one.

Fearing this might stretch the boundaries of health and safety somewhat, JP visited the ground floor neighbour Mr A to assess the situation from the garden. A few nettle stings and much discussion followed, and we decided to try stringing the new line up by attaching it to the old rope and pulling it through the pulleys at each end.

Mr A fetched some tape to attach the lines together while JP went back upstairs to unpack the new line and drop it from the window. The new line was 60m long and very thin (it was designed for a conventional rotary washing line frame) so we decided to double it up for added strength.

It took some time to unravel the 60m line and remove all the kinks and knots that had appeared while doing so, but eventually the middle of the line was found and passed down to Mr A who was waiting patiently down below. He attached it to the rope and we tried pulling it up, but it caught on the pulley and clearly wasn’t going to pass through. Time for a rethink.

After a bit more head scratching we realised we could pull it the other way, attaching the other ends of the old rope and new line to form and loop and pulling the old rope through the pulley. The old rope was in poor condition so we taped it up very securely and started pulling. There were cries of delight and relief as the join passed through the pulley at the other end and we managed to get the whole of the old rope replaced by the new line, passed it though the pulley at the window, cut off the old rope and tied the new line ends together to form a tight loop.

Not as simple a task as had first been envisaged, but all the more satisfying for its completion!