You spin me right round, baby

10Mar08

If you asked me to name one piece of electrical or electronic equipment I couldn’t live without, chances are that the humble washing machine wouldn’t be the first thing I’d think of. I’d probably rather keep my laptop, or my mobile phone. But that’s because I’ve never tried to do a whole load of washing by hand before.

I wish there was a more dramatic story here, but there really isn’t. DestructoBoy! and I moved into our shiny new flat last weekend, amid all sorts of chaos (most of which was only the culmination of two months’ worth of chaos), and set about settling in. We’d brought a load of dirty laundry with us from the old flat – washing we’d just not got around to doing – and moving seems to have generated even more. A towering stack of dusty linen here, a pile of dirty socks there… mostly, stuff we’d been ignoring in favour of more urgent unpacking (or just more interesting unpacking – like, say, the Xbox). But this Saturday, I decided it was time to tackle the washing, not least because we were starting to run out of clean underwear.

I’ve always found washing machines a bit of a trial, because they each seem to use a completely different range of arcane symbols. The new kitchen features a set of switches for all the appliances – cooker, hob, microwave, dishwasher, fridge, etc – in one corner of the room and it took me rather longer than it should have to realise that they were actually mislabelled. (“I’ve switched on the washing machine, but it’s not coming on.” “Well, have you tried this switch?” “No, because that says dishwasher.” “Right, but… now the washing machine’s on.”) Eventually, after a lot of faffing about, I managed to set a load of dark cotton washing on an economy cycle at 30% with an hour’s tumble drying afterwards. The lights went on, the water started to pour in, the drum turned around… and then stopped.

And stayed stopped.

After about ten minutes, I switched it off and on again, and it started up again… and then stopped. Then I noticed that the dial had turned itself around – from “4″ to “spanner”.

I’m no expert, but even I could figure out that “spanner” might mean “something’s wrong”. And indeed it was. The drum wouldn’t drain, but neither would it wash. A week’s worth of shirts and pants were being held hostage in murky, scummy cold water that wouldn’t go anywhere, and a quick call to the estate agents confirmed that we wouldn’t be able to get anyone to fix it till much later in the week.

Here is where I did something that, in retrospect, was really rather stupid. I decided that I would be able to finish this load of laundry off by hand. We’d bought some handwash liquid previously, there wasn’t THAT much laundry, and we had a bathtub – how hard could it be, right?

Well, as it turns out, really hard. The bath taps are temperamental, alternately squirting cold water and scaldingly hot water; the clothes were cold and waterlogged and gross; and the soap made my hands dry and sore. All the scrubbing and rinsing and wringing in the world didn’t seem to be making things any better, but after half an hour I was determined not to give up – after all, I’d got this far, and giving up would make it all a waste of time, right?

Right. Another ten minutes and I was done: my wet jeans felt disgusting, I was tired, my hands hurt, and I was sick of nearly burning myself. I hung everything up to drip dry, called a friend, and arranged to take the laundry over to her house and use her washing machine.

I’m eternally grateful to both her, and the person who invented washing machines. I can only hope that mine will be fixed soon, and that I remember, in future, that I am not cut out for handwashing vast amounts of dirty clothes. Urghhhhh.

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Tags: electricals, moving house, things breaking down