Washing machine day

A little bit of Nunhead - this was Saturday evening and taken on my way to the Old Nun's Head for a welcome drink after my day at home and in the garden.

Now I know I need to be careful that I am not just writing this because I have a blog but hey Saturday was the day of the washing machine. I needed to replace the one that gave up the ghost the other day. Now there may be good reasons for this expiration as I have since learned that that I should have both cleaned out the filter at least once a month and also left the door ajar after every wash thus saving around four years in washing machine life. I did neither. For the six years I have had it, I have been systematically using and abusing it. So it stopped one night with a full load of towels and soapy water. Now I had a problem - washing machine or net book? The net book won and so I searched for a secondhand washer.

The new-old machine is about six years old and he is in my flat just waiting for the final connection. I found him on the East Dulwich Forum -a fantastic source of gossip and bargains http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/ and yes he is cheap and a little rusty but as long as he spins I will be happy!

Tescoman collected the machine with me in his van and we put it by the front door for me to give it a serious clean as he went to work. As he left, a truck pulled up and out jumped two chaps who were only too happy to take it off my hands. Aha! I said you can't have this one but there is one inside that you can have if you can un-plumb it. With that they duly tackled the problem of getting the old one out from my rather bizarre kitchen space and told me that "whoever put this in had awkward hands, lady." I promised to call them if the new-old one turned out not to work either!

And then it was just me on the sofa and the cleaned up new-old machine on the doorstep waiting until my brother could arrive and help get it into the house and connected. I wasn't sure whether I was guarding it or it was guarding me but I was trapped. Some time later I was finally in and so was it, Except it is not connected because it is different to the other one. And the moral? I am beginning to think I should have waited for the net book.