An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography by Janet Frame

An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography by Janet Frame

Author:Janet Frame [Frame, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780349006697
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2015-02-05T00:00:00+00:00


15

Threading Needles

The answer was decided for me. I found work as a laundry assistant at the Oamaru Public Hospital, where I spent each day enclosed in the mangle room, drawing out the hot wet sheets as they appeared between the rollers, folding them and passing them to another assistant. Our faces in the steamy heat were flushed and sweating, and the conversation above the roar of the machinery was usually a shouted question and answer (‘Are you going to the Scottish this Saturday?’ ‘Are you coming to Mary’s shower?’) enlarged upon during the tea breaks, when the desirability of the ‘Scottish’ (a hall used for weekly dances) was debated, and Mary’s or Vivian’s or Noeline’s engagement ‘shower’ prepared for. I had no answers to the simplest questions: where had I been working before I came to the laundry? Was I ‘going out’ with anyone? Why didn’t I get my hair straightened? I could discuss the radio serial My Husband’s Love, which we listened to at ten o’clock each morning. I knew one or two racehorses, including Plunder Bar. I knew songs – ‘Give Me Five Minutes More’,



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