He didn’t quite know what was happening , struck inside a shiny metal cylinder looking up to see the sky above close out and to be left in utter darkness. When he heard and felt water come trickling down from the dark heavens, his level of panic and fear rose by a factor of a hundred, his heartbeat became eratic and irregular as he felt mildly warm tendrils of water wrap around his ankles and calves – swimming was not a favoured pastime -His confidence and belief were choking and by the time it got to his head he was swimming in a sea of panic, still, the water continued to pour, now he couldn’t touch the bottom and then the cylinder started to move from side to side in a regular motion.

He seemed to be surrounded by a hundred other bodies, all struggling and fighting to get to the top, battling for air, but the agitation got stronger and stronger and he was plunged to the bottom of the cylinder by a heavy current. He held his breath until his lungs were on fire before making a dart back to the surface, it was pandemonium. Nobody had told him back at the sock factory that this would occur. Was this the dark arts of sock manufacture nobody wanted to speak of? Before he could finish that thought he was sucked down into the rough and tumble of the bottom of the washing machine again, flashes of the faces of other panicked merchants floated by him, but, some were singing and dancing like angels- they’d done this before, knew the drill, was it something you could get used to he wondered before almost having his toe sucked off and then it stopped………. and he felt the cylinder start to turn to the right faster and faster…..