Before we begin, can I offer you some warm cheese, lukewarm but raw scallops, or a bar of melting cod with an eye hole in it?
Sure? I have plenty.
I know I have written previously about the UODAKA (The Union Of Domestic And Kitchen Appliances). When you wake in a cold sweat in the night, hearing murmuring from the kitchen that will be UODAKA members having a meeting. I wrote about this when the S&H came back home to live, bringing with him many many dirty clothes, and the washing machine had a nervous breakdown and the cooker came out in sympathy.
This time round it was the new lino that gave them all the heebbie-jeebies.
As we had carefully asked at the flooring shop for the floor layer to arrive after noon, he was, naturally, nice and early at half past ten.
The previous day, the OH having decided to join in with the house makeover, he had had a lovely time with a hot paint stripper and the door into the garage, carefully covering the walls, those he had previously painted, with a nice fine airborne grit of green paint particles, which he pointed out to me today as I was holding the new fridge freezer aloft.
Anyhow, some of the preparation was done for the floor layer laying lino in the utility. The little bedroom having been done by me was utterly ready, obviously, the utility did not contain the fridge freezer, the OH and the lovely neighbour having moved it last night. It did not contain the washing machine which the OH and I had moved last night, despite his desire to leave it till the morning and visit the pub to see what it was like, at all.
So it was the lino layer who hefted the dishwasher into the garage and let go.
It was the lino layer who suggested that in the recess where the machines live, he should continue the lino in a curve up the wall in case, perish the thought, a machine should ever leak water. What? A dishwasher or a washing machine leaking water? Nah! Never, ever going to happen, not in this universe, anyhow.
So the layer laid and he and the OH carried the fridge freezer back in and plugged it in and it went bang. It no work. It dead.
The layer left, with speed and eighty pounds in pictures of the Queen and was far up the road and going round the corner when the dishwasher, which was obviously in love with the fridge but had told no one, broke down in tears and then became incontinent, and the dying freezer joined in.
When we had finished paddling and used every mop, sponge, cloth and kitchen paper roll in our possession, and someone (me) had the bright idea of turning the water to the dishwasher to ‘OFF’, we then took ourselves and all my plastic cards for paying to the local electrical goods emporium to have a chat with the millionaires there.
We came home with a delivery date of today and a phone number to ring so the robot could eventually tell me, after several tries to ring it (it was not in, had popped out to the cinema or something) that the delivery would be today about four in the afternoon.
So at eleven on clock in the morning the delivery van hove into view, and after various struggles, the fridge freezer, which had looked so tiny in the showroom and wouldn’t fit through the arch to the back door. but did in the end with the packaging off, was delivered.
And as the delivery men left, emphasising with merry laughs, how simple it was to change the side at which the fridge door hinged. At which point the washing machine which was washing all the cloths from the previous day, burst into tears and flooded the floor.
The OH had wanted wood block flooring. I wanted lino, I cannot remember why, something to do with water, perhaps?
For the third time in about eighteen hours we had floods.
Then we set about changing the fridge hinge side because the OH was very very confident. Saying ‘How difficult can it be? They say there is a thing online.’
In the sales I had bought myself a set of screwdrivers, sockets, handles, wrenches and so on, all very heavy metal tools, because the OH had taken all those that we owned and locked them in his shed and I wanted to be able to do things like change a plug without a trip down the garden.
As this, very heavy, comprehensive, heavy set (did I mention this was heavy?) was close to hand the OH’s stuff being down the garden in the rain, he used this to unscrew the screws. He popped up the step ladder and put the entire (heavy) set on top of the fridge. Then he popped down the ladder and wanted to unscrew the screws on the bottom of the heavy fridge freezer. (Am I sufficiently describing the weight to you? Are you aware of the heaviness of things? There was weight involved, and also, in a couple of sentences, gravity. Keep reading but please bear the word ‘HEAVY’ as in ‘WEIGHT’ in mind.) (Keep your eye on it. ) (I did.)
The OH then called his wife, an elderly lady with two broken arms, from another room to assist him by catching the fridge freezer as he tilted it away from him towards his wife.
Yes every single screwdriver, nut, bolt, and heavy metal object fell off the top of the tilted fridge on to my eye.
I ran upstairs screaming, as you do, and thought I had gone blind.
I had not. Miraculously my contact lens had saved my eye and had been knocked out on to the floor in the flood. The OH came upstairs to the bathroom with it, saying ‘There you are, the lens is not broken!’ in a confident and cheerful tone.
You know those murder mysteries where the husband is found reclining beneath a fridge freezer with every single one of a very comprehensive set of screwdrivers inserted?
So I went next door, where my lovely neighbour had some of my frozen stuff in her fridge and got a block of fish and held it on my eye and held the fridge up with one broken arm while the OH carried on.
And later I rebalanced the washing machine and emptied the sump and dried the floor and that was my weekend.
I believe a black eye may be on the horizon.
And maybe a divorce.
Even a working utility room. (No, don’t be silly, the UODAKA wouldn’t allow it.}
I am going to bed early with my eye. which I still have, because I have to get up at the crack of dawn to let the plumber in and the carpenter because the floor layer has now rendered the door too low and the one on the carpeted bedroom just had to come right off.
Why am I having this eventful life? Some people (of whom I am utterly jealous) get bored.
In a mere four hours I can go and switch on my new fridge freezer, which by then, I am told, ‘Will have settled’ (Like a cat do you think, where you cannot let them out for six weeks until they decide they are home?)
It’ll be talking to the washing machine in the night, I’ll hear it when I come downstairs at four to switch the heating off (the heating controller is a computer- what idiot thought of that?) Next thing you know the fridge will get emails and spam* and we’ll all be off to hell in a handcart,
until the wheel comes off.
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*It won’t actually get Spam. I don’t like it, or processed meat in general.