The Real March Of The Machines
How dilapidated do your white goods have to get before you’ll replace them? Some phases of my life have seemed like wars of attrition against machines that are there to serve us. I lived in a terrible flat in East London once, my bedroom was pentagonal which somehow made it worth it, but we had a fridge freezer, it was so old that it had one of those little freezers in the top that keep the whole affair cold. Anyway the door of the freezer compartment broke and the compartment would become choked with ice every week or two. It was only when I was defrosting it with a cleaver and I accidentally (on purpose) pierced the cooling element that we finally got a new integrated fridge freezer. I was inexplicably over excited when they delivered it, going without a useful freezer had damaged me!
Another property I rented when I was younger had one of those washer driers that seem to present a positive threat. Never had one? This one vibrated so badly that when it went into spin it would literally walk out of the space it was supposed to occupy under the worktop and stroll across the kitchen floor until eventually turning itself off when the plug came out of the socket. While it paraded around the kitchen it would make a sound similar to what I’d expect the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena to sound like if a maniac was at the controls. Then it would go silent, standing in the middle of the room, some how looking angry, thwarted in its spin cycle.
On the other hand I didn’t use the slimline dishwasher in my present house for a year because I had been told it was broken and didn’t work. Eventually I thought I’d have a look and see if I could fix it. Turns out I could. My not inconsiderable engineering skills immediately told me that switching the power to the ‘on’ position would be an intelligent place to start.
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