When the house next door was built in the seventies, Ted’s wife, who designed it, made it all electrical because she thought it was cleaner, safer and better. A mere half a century later public opinion has caught up with her.
We do have a new boiler for the gas central heating, installed when we had the extension done. Otherwise we are electric.
I keep getting small candles, I think they are called tea lights, as free gifts, which I stockpile because we have the electric light, don’t cha know? And also, I was a young teacher in the seventies when we didn’t have the electric light for phases, when the rubbish was piling up in the streets, strikes were everywhere and the entertainment of an evening was reading a book by candlelight, which makes you squint.
So I am very grateful to have elected to have the electric, until it all goes pear shaped, which is the wrong shape for electricity.
I came down one morning with the washing basket to find the washing machine sitting incontinently in a puddle. The washing machine is old, it is the only appliance that survived the destruction and rebuilding of the utility room. Like all other appliances, it lived in the garage with the builders, like them, sheltering under plastic sheets when the roof was off and the rain was on.
Subsequently, moved back into the newly floored utility room, the dishwasher didn’t and the fridge made an audible pop when switched on and switched itself off. Apparently if you move fridges you need to let them settle before you turn them back on. Who knew?
The only appliance to be plugged back in and switched on that behaved as before was the Bosch washing machine. It has washed for another three years, except now it wouldn’t.
I receive emails from our local electrical retailer frequently after I bought video games for the grandchildren there. Irritatingly the washing machine became incontinent the day after I had deleted the latest special offer email. However, the following day, which the OH spent scrolling and reading out loud from his phone, I received another fabulous urgent take advantage now these prices will not last email, causing me to use gallons of ink and sheets of paper printing endless specifications of numerous white goods, which neither of us could be bothered to do much more than glance at.
The following day was pay day, hooray, and I had discovered how to isolate the washing machines for printing another sheaf of paper which no one could be bothered to read, which I took with me to the out of town electrical retailer.
In the store we learned that the washing machine assistant was on her break, no other employee was even sure which appliances were the washing machines and there were no customer toilets.
It is not just elderly washing machines who like to know where the toilets are, in this case they were in the supermarket opposite.
Rinsed and spun we returned to the electrical retailer and began perusing washing machines. Having established by the usual means of violent argument that our price bracket was not the ones that cost nearly a grand and played tunes, or the ones that also made toast, neither was it the ones clearly made from old baked bean tins with sharp edges and sharp prices. We were in the middle. This helped quite a bit and simplified the field to a number like a few and we were nearly at choice when matters were complicated immeasurably by the OH asking the opinion of the Washing Machine Mastermind Colleague returned fresh from a break.
This lady had obviously suffered much at the sharp end of retail and had therefore developed a defence mechanism of agreeing with all customer opinions.
I began to wish I had brought sandwiches.
The OH fell for a machine from a brand I had never heard of, mainly because it was black. It did not completely resemble the deck of the Star Ship Enterprise, though if you’d sat Ahura on top with a phone, you’d have had to look twice.
We kept going round and round the rows, the Mastermind assistant kept firmly to the affirmative and I kept holding out for the slightly less expensive but not cheap models. The Star Ship Washing machine, at the upper upper bracket, suddenly coming into play when Mastermind vouchsafed the information that the unknown brand was merely a new imprint of a very familiar brand, changed to match Star Ship Status and that you could get it for £100 less in white.
However, the white one still had a black control panel and, crucially for me, a black glass door.
This is daft. The utility room has no window, only a half glass door. How am I supposed to see what is happening behind a black door?
The OH, beguiled by the look of a domestic appliance whose predecessors he has never previously been known to operate, argued strongly and so speciously he could be a politician, for the Enterwash, that I was obliged to bribe him by sending him to look at hobs, while I actually had a good look at what the machines did, with the fabulous expertise of the individual who actually utilises the item in question.
I quickly discovered that the SS Washing machine had a touch panel lint filter, whereas the slightly cheaper, this week’s special offer machine I liked, had a pull open, razor sharp lint filter door that I couldn’t open at all.
So the SS Washing Machine won, despite the black door.
Then we had the finance argument, assisted by the assistant.
Happily I prevailed and we are not going to mortgage the future in very easy instalments, we paid all at once and will not eat for the last three weeks of the month, which is the method I used to afford the tree surgeons while the OH was on holiday, that cost a mere £595 in unmarked notes.
I am off on Tuesday to have the new crown fitted on my crumbling tooth which I have already paid through the nose for and there are still the bushes on the spindles of the front wheels of my car to come.
I really could do with a month with no unexpected expenses.
So, I think I hear you say, brightly, that’s the saga of the washing machine is it?
Welcome inexperienced reader! Read on, as long as your device is not candle powered.
Though, if it is, would you like some free tea lights?
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