Date: 18 February 2010 09:42:58
While some parts of our home and being fixed many other things appear to be breaking.
First to die was our bread maker - it’s baked us bread at least twice a week for the past 3 or 4 years and is relied upon to make pizza dough (elder son declares that shop bought stuff is “yucky” and tells me “pizza is my favourite… but I only like mummy’s”). So I’m making pizza dough by hand and buying bread for the time being.
Next to go was my watch (posh solar powered thing bought by my husband). This means that not only am I struggling to know what the time is, but I’ve also totally lost track of the date. My watch has been sent off to be mended. Lovely lady at the jewellers says it could take 5 or 6 weeks.
Add to that the fact that my digital camera has finally lost focus (pretty good going since it remained just about working for a full year after being dropped on a rock from a great height by someone who wasn’t me… and a lovely friend has now lent me their spare one so I can take in-focus pictures again!)… and the fact our dishwasher started leaking which required purchase of a very expensive spare part and assistance of my dad to fix it… and you’ll understand why I was a little concerned when the washing machine started flooding the floor last week.
The first time it happened I wondered if new-lodger (we had a friendly law student move in last month) had just caught one of his items in the door seal and allowed the leak. As I have done on occasion before. I mopped the floor and carried on as normal. I did a couple of loads of washing myself, no problems.
Then one evening I walk into the utility room and discover bubbles everywhere. The floor was awash and I couldn’t see the clothes in the machine there was so much foam. I called to the new-lodger and asked if it was his washing in the machine. Yes, it was his. What powder or liquid had he used? He replied the stuff in the cupboard. I asked him to show me. I pointed at the 5 litre refill bottle that was sitting next to the empty washing liquid bottle (I buy ecological stuff in bulk and re-fill). Unfortunately the refill he pointed to was not the washing liquid one. It was the washing-up liquid. Subtle difference. Hard to spot if you’re Chinese and struggling with this weird English language. And even harder to spot when the washing-up liquid refill is usually stashed under the kitchen sink and has only just moved there on a temporary basis while the kitchen is refitted. But the results were not hard to spot. Particularly as he’d decide to use a double quantity to try and remove the grease that had been spilt on his work shirt the evening before.
Lodger returned to his studies hoping the wash would be ok when it was done. I spent almost a hour rinsing the washing (by hand following several failed attempts in the machine) and putting it on to wash with clothes washing liquid. Why waste an hour of my precious evening fixing someone else's mistake? I guess I was just so relieved to find out that our machine is not broken.
And don’t think that particular lodger will make the same mistake again.