First, the birthday.
Happy Birthday Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the Internet without which you would not be reading this, and there would be no point in me writing it. You’ve got to hand it to him, that was jolly clever. His invention has enabled me to write for sixteen and three quarter years what is basically a newspaper column without a newspaper, and you to read it for free. Readers of my miniatures hobby magazine columns asked if I could write for free about things that interested them. In the early days I was plagued with advertisers who told me it would be profitable to annoy you with pop-up adverts, but I was sufficiently into the Internet to know that such things drive people extremely insane very quickly, so I resisted. I am always on the side of the reader. Reading words uses a lot of your brain and keeps the blood flowing through it. Keeping the blood flowing at speed through the arteries and veins in your brain is like squirting a high pressure hose down a drain, the rubbish gets washed out, the channels are kept open, everything works. You couldn’t be reading this for free and helping to keep your brain working, for free, were it not for Tim Berners Lee. So very happy birthday Tim and thank you from me and readers round the world.
The saga of the water in the utility room and three washing machines may be at a conclusion. I have just washed a small load in the second new washing machine, the floor is dry, birds sing, the sun rises and all is well.
Yesterday a plumber arrived. The whole sorry saga might have ended much sooner had the plumber arrived two weeks ago when I first noticed that I was paddling. Twenty years ago SWDC (Skint With Dependant Child) the OH and I would have attempted to do the plumbing ourselves. Younger and stronger we would have shifted the machines and stared at the pipes. Thus we alone would have gazed upon the dishwasher feed hose dripping gently upon the skirting board, the resulting rivulet obeying the laws of gravity and running not under the adjacent dishwasher but taking the slight ox bow lake under the washing machine.
Was it simply age and the weight of the washing machine that deterred you, I think I hear you ask.
No. When we had the extensions done three years ago the person building the two inch thick built-in counter over the machines chose to make a thin neat tunnel in the back of the counter that only fitted the leads of the machines. The electrical plugs appeared above the counter and were plugged in to the safely situated sockets half way up the wall.
We had already dodged this design singularity once, voiding all warranties by cutting off the moulded plug supplied with the appliance and, pulling the wire through the hole, moving the old washing machine, then, replacing it in place, powering it by rewiring a new, unwarrantied plug.
But with unknown water issues affecting both machines the OH gritted his teeth, grasped his tool of all work and cut a hole of sufficient size to admit a plug. It took him well over an hour, because no one appreciates a two inch thick counter top as much as the man who has just cut through it.
Having done all of this and purchased a new extension lead for the dishwasher plug which only ever just surfaced above the counter and never made it to the dizzying heights of the sockets, the OH lost the will to work, so I called the plumber. I was worried that the problem might be the old drain down for the central heating which was put in a much smaller utility room forty plus years ago. This device, a plethora of pipe ends, terminals and blind pipes also supplies the cold water feed for the outside tap and the cloakroom. I have gazed upon this structure in awe, wondering as people have wondered who gaze upon the pyramids: How did they do that, and also, why?
One cannot, however, crawl behind the washing machine and gaze upon the wonder of the pipe ends because someone long ago made a little wooden box to cover the piperamids, making it impossible for the householder upon her ancient knees, with torch, to identify the origin of the shiny water upon the floor.
So, as Flanders and Swan remarked, it all makes work for the working man to do.
The plumber secured the hose very firmly with an extra doo dad. I gave my hamstrings another work out cleaning the floor in the tiny gap, and the skirting board and the machine hoses and pipes, and paid the plumber.
All that remains is to have a go with the dishwasher and go to the electrical store and apologise profusely for the second machine and thank them for the trouble they went to, and tell them I will buy a new machine whenever this one gives up without demur, for the receipt for the first machine went off in the plastic instructions bag with the instructions and the first new washing machine, with the cheerful chap who delivers all over the West Midlands and Wales, in case you were wondering.
If the dishwasher washes tonight I will breathe out and get on with life, after what has been a lengthy but not Icelandic, or Operatic saga. Kingdoms did not fall, Ancient Gods did not appear to carry off comely mortals whilst warbling, though there was a lot of paddling, some fretting, little sleep, at least half a kitchen roll and sufficient expense to ensure the rest of the month will be quite slimming.
My grandmother never had these problems with her washboard and poss stick. She possed her clothes in the kitchen sink and, in the nineteen seventies, was still grateful that water came out of the taps, already hot, instead of having to be fetched in a jug from the pump and heated in a basin over the fire.
Modern life is a miracle balanced on a knife edge. If the teenage consortium of a hostile power decided to take out the electricity, there would be a rush for the washboard in the quaint Victorian laundry room of the Museum.
Because if the electricity was out you couldn’t even make a lot of washboards and sell them through the Big River retailer.
Round here we’d all be down by the canal with a basket of socks and a bag of rocks.
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