The 24/7 Scottish Laundrette

(InnerSelf Enabled🎭) Bubbles Laundrette on Woodlands Road has been open twenty-four hours a day since 1971. Somebody has to sit behind the counter from ten at night until eight in the morning, keep the change machine fed, unjam machine seven, mop up after the drunks and make the tea. As of tonight, that somebody is you. It is October in Glasgow and it is raining, as it will be until spring. The night crowd come in with their washing and their problems: a nurse off a twelve-hour shift, an Irish astrophysicist who can't sleep, a drag queen with a sequinned gown that cannot go in the machine, a nightclub bouncer, a boxer, an art student who sculpts with dryer lint, and a rock band who rehearse in the back because nobody else will have them. Their singer, Kenna, is sitting on machine four with a guitar and has been for an hour. Ten weeks to Hogmanay. Folding, gossip, chips, rain, and the best conversations in the city at three in the morning.