I have had a day so beset with frustration that I have become prickly with impatience. I am sitting here shrouded in the irritating sensation that none of my clothes fit me properly.
I have had enough of the day. It has been a headachy nuisance from beginning to end.
I have still got a headache, except I haven’t. This is because whenever it crawls back to the surface and wraps its chilly tentacles around my skull, I just take another handful of drugs. These act like the sort of banishing incantation performed by somebody scary with a beard and a long dress and preferably an eye-patch, and I like them very much. It says on the packet that they are addictive, but since they both taste disgusting and give me indigestion I do not feel in any great danger of longing for more, and am eagerly awaiting the moment when the headache sinks back into the murky depths in perpetuity.
The problem has been, yet again, the tiresome washing machine.
It is now deceased, inconsiderately.
I would like to say that it expired peacefully, with a quiet sigh, but it didn’t. It had death-throes so vigorous and prolonged that they would have shamed a third-rate tragedian performing Macbeth in the local church hall.
It rattled and bashed and banged so loudly that we could not hear ourselves speak in the conservatory, which is two rooms away and out of doors, at least when it comes to the stupid Government social distancing rules. It sounded like a concrete block being jackhammered to pieces by a frenzied washing-machine murderer, which basically, when we looked at the debris on the floor afterwards, was what had happened.
It had not even had the decency to spin my last load properly, and worse, died with the door locked.
It took me some time to extricate the load of sodden, un-rinsed washing from its bowels. This is currently lying in the washing basket, wondering about growing some black mould, whilst I decide what to do with it.
I am at such a stage of laundry-related despair that ‘throw it away’ is high on the list of options.
Certainly that is going to be the washing machine’s fate, although to my extreme frustration, even though I am going to go to Kendal tomorrow, I can’t take it with me and dump it at the tip. This is because the newly socially distancing tip men won’t help you any more, and I can’t get it out of the boot of the car by myself. We are going to have to waste one of Mark’s precious days off, hauling a stupid washing machine corpse halfway across the county and dumping it responsibly at the stupid tip.
I am trying hard not even to consider hurling it into the lake.
Obviously this sudden bereavement has meant that we are going to have to get another, and I have wasted the whole of the rest of the day trying to remedy this.
I can’t see why it has got to be so difficult. These are the days of the mighty Internet, when you can find out the mass of an atom, learn the steps of the Tango and talk to your daughter in Canada, all at the click of a button.
You can’t, however, find a 9kg washing machine with a 1600 spin and an energy efficient A+++ rating, not at a reasonable price that will deliver tomorrow.
What you get is loads of irritating adverts for things that you don’t want at all.
Eventually I found something which would more or less do on Currys website, only to discover that their promised Free Delivery! doesn’t happen for a fortnight, and if you want Delivery Now Please, you have got to pay another thirty quid. I tried to ring them up to see if they had got one anyway, and sat in their answering queue for ages, whilst an enthusiastic voice told me helpful things about Currys determination not to give me Bat Flu, as evidenced by their carefully thought-out social distancing policies, one of which appeared to include not answering their telephone.
In the end I hung up and thought that I would go and see them tomorrow to harangue them in person. I have got to go to Kendal anyway, because of taking Mark’s car for its MOT, so I will take his credit card and go and shout at them through their perspex screens.
It will have to be tomorrow. I think we have got about three days before we will have run out of clean clothes and be obliged to go everywhere in our dressing gowns.
I am cross and frustrated.
Can you tell?
2 Comments
Wow. Dead washing machine or not you’re on top creative writing form today. I thought my morning was starting fairly badly, with a crashing headache under the back of my skull and having to confront an even more chaotic kitchen than usual, though having been in there long enough to make a cup of tea and feed the cats I’ve walked away again like an utter coward.
Quite encouraged by your murdered washing machine story because my problem isn’t quite as bad as that. Mostly it’s due to having told myself I’d better clear it up before going to bed last night, then took one look and thought i’d feel braver in the morning, which I don’t. of course.
My big mistake was to take pity on all the indoor plants which needed a good soak to recover from long-term neglect. Having no outside space in this too-small flat the obvious place to do this seemed (several days ago) to give them a bath in the kitchen sink, taking it in turns. Which meant that, again in turns, they had to sit dripping water and bits of soil ad dead leaves on all available surfaces. Since then everything else that needed to be put down on a surface in the kitchen had to take pot luck among the burgeoning greenery. Now there is no space for even one thing more until I’ve tackled the whole situation with determination and ruthlessness.
Realise I am just putting it all off again, as usual.
Find an enormous old towel, fold it up on the kitchen floor and stand them on it. They can stay there until you get sick of tripping over them.