I've (not) Got a Washing Machine

So. Four years or so ago - maybe even as many as five - we bought a new washing machine, the one my parents having donated to us when we moved in together having expired very suddenly.

We bought one that was advertised as a manager's special. Someone had bought it before, taken it home and had returned it after one use to the store, so it was a very good machine reduced in price by about £120. I had £50 worth of vouchers from my then job too, we used to get a bonus twice a year and would get little gifts now and again if the company share price was high or if they wanted to ensure a little more worker co-operation. So, this machine cost us I think around the £200 mark, which meant we got a really very tasty machine.

Thing about its having been returned once already (for aesthetic reasons, apparently) was that it couldn't be returned again by us once bought.

We took it home, filled it up, switched it on. And discovered that unless you set it to do a 30 degree c mixed coloureds wash, it wouldn't work. At all. So for four and a half years or so, I have been unable to do a whites wash, a boil wash, a quick wash, wash a half-load...any of the less ordinary washes you might wish to do. For a girl raised to believe that dish towels and hankies and underwear all got blasted at 60 degrees minimum, this has been pure torture. Certain things just don't seem properly clean, and I hate that.

Anyway, the buggering thing has been misbehaving itself for the last year or so. It arbitrarily would fill with water, turn the drum a few times and then would just go 'click...click...click' as the knob clicked aimlessly round the programme dial and the washing stayed locked in the creature's guts. I used to be blamed for overloading it. Load of rubbish, but if you switched it off and emptied half the load out and switched it on again, it would work.

Last Sunday, it ate one of my bras. I mean, it ripped one half of the back fastener off (the hook side) and ripped another part of the side arrangements off too. A whole piece of bra has vanished into the subterranean, stygian depths, never to be seen again. On Thursday night, himself filled it with his clothes, switched it on, and it filled with water. Then he went to the pub, yelling over his shoulder as he walked out the door for me to go and put the washing in the tumble dryer in an hour or so.

I forgot.

When he came home, the machine was full of water. It was still going. The drum would go 'swoosh, swoosh swoosh...*grrrrnkkk* swish, swish, swish *grrrrrrnk* swoosh, swoosh, swoosh' but would do nothing more than that. It never did play ball if you moved the programme dial to the rinse cycle or any trick like that, and it didn't on Thursday night either. The only thing we could do was switch it off so we could eventually open the door. It stayed full of water which it kept heated to the right temperature, but it would do nothing else.

It is now upside down in the back yard, with the door broken off and the drum detached from its mountings.

We've been looking at new ones but came home to consider the plumbing situation and to eat KFC *guilty shrug*. The new machines all seem to have cold water fill only, whereas the old one was both hot and cold, so we need to see if the little tap arrangement on the side of the pipe by the connector will actually serve to cut off the flow in the hot pipe, or whether we need to get some kind of stop piece or something.

Right now, the man is zonkoed on the sofa, fast asleep with a belly full of chicken. I am injuncted to awake him at half past three, no later. Yeah right. I know how hard he is to waken. I'll be lucky if I can get his arse off the chair in three or four hours. In the meantime, I have no water.

I don't much feel like talking about the W situation right now. Maybe I will do an update on that, maybe I won't. Right now, the world is alternately full of golden opportunity and very scary and black and with very little money. I hate change. Always have.