In praise of laundramats

Boy, is taking pictures of stuff that’s black hard! Apologies for the blechy photo. As readers might recall, Aunt Toby and the DH are going on a bit of a ‘vacances’ to the UK starting next week (and that’s right, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to blog while we are away; sincere attempts shall be made). And packing is always a challenge but doubly so for travel in the summer in the UK (and it all depends literally if you are in the north or south, on the west coast or the east coast). We will be traveling from London to Glasgow in Scotland and from there to Cornwall and back to London with a side trip to Bath. So, between north and south and west coast, we will need to be ready for anything short of snow (and only because we are not going to Ben Nevis in Scotland).

Now, what I meant to do, at least what was in my head, was a spirited defense of not dressing in all black. And I pulled out the stuff that I thought would work best and …it’s all black. Sheesh.

Usually, I go with a ‘theme’ when we travel and then I can put together outfits and everything goes together. Part of my problem is that a good chunk of this visit is in the hands of some of my UK cousins and so we don’t know exactly what is in store for us. It could be hiking, or we could be going to churches and botanical gardens. No way to know since they have Plan A (good weather) and Plan B( bad weather) but there will be a theatre performance, so I need something a little bit dressy. So I have to be able to get maximum flexibility out of this. What you see here does NOT include the outfit which I am going to wear on the plane, which is my attempt to put as much stuff ON my body to keep me warm in the flying fridges plying the not-so-friendly-skies these days. And that outfit consists of a pair of knit black ankle length pants paired with a 3/4 sleeve beige and red top and a wool/cotton cardigan (actually, it started out as a giant Landsend turtleneck but that is a tale for another time) and black sandals from Aerosoles (I quite dote on Aerosoles since they have shoes in my size in wide which is as close to finding the Holy Grail as I’m going to get). Bogata

The other pair of shoes is a pair of walking shoes. I figure between the two, I’m taken care of.

Now, looking at this amalgamation of clothing, here is what I’ve got:
Bottoms:
The aforementioned black knit pants
Black pencil shirt
A red knit skirt
Black/white melange linen dressy shorts

Tops:
Black
Black with white pin dots
Black, cream, deep pink 3/4 sleeve top with matching ring scarf
Pink cami
The aforementioned beige and red 3/4 sleeve top

Covers:
The aforementioned red cardi
Black lacy cardi
Raincoat
Black hat

We are going to be away for almost two weeks and this does not look like a lot. I can run through all the permutations and combinations pretty quickly. So…we’re going to have to take a bit of time to do some laundry (probably in Glasgow, actually). I’m not one much for the ‘rinse out in the hotel sink’ thing. By the time we’ve been rushing around to museums, churches and botanical gardens (and, cough, shopping, cough), we’re pretty ready to find someplace to put our feet up for an hour and get the cleaning done. I know some people might argue with me that you don’t travel 3000 miles to end up in a laundrette dealing with dirty laundry, but it’s no big deal, truly.

And it leaves that much more room in the suitcase, ahem, if you know what I mean.