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Sunday 21 April 2013

How to get stuck in your washing machine : A guide for the beginner

About thirty minutes before I was due to leave the house for a visit to Tim and Mandy (my guest stars from the day at the funfair a couple of posts back), I went to haul a load of washing out of the machine.
 I'd climbed out of the bath, thrown a long button down shirt on so's not to flash the guys working in the garage at the back, and realised that I needed to hang the stuff up otherwise it would reek by the time I got in.

To put things into perspective, there's a running joke about the washing machine at my house being possessed. It has moments, like trundling halfway across the kitchen floor during the spin cycle, or rocking gently from side to side, when I wonder if that's really a joke.

I got most of the load out. Stuck my hand in for last little bundle of socks and realised I couldn't pull it back out.

One of the buttons on my shirt sleeve was just the right size to fit into those funny little circles punched in the drum of the machine, and it was wedged very firmly in.

I wiggled. I waggled. I manually rotated the drum, which was a mistake. Fifteen minutes later I was lying on the floor, staring glumly at the ceiling with my cuff still attached firmly to the washing machine, and very happy that I hadn't actually dislocated my shoulder when the drum moved.   

Thankfully the shirt is loose-fitting, so at this point I gave up and wriggled out of it, then ended up squatting on the floor like a morose chimp plucking at the sleeve still stuck to the machine. Due to the layout of the kitchen, even duck-walking would have shown the mechanics a few things they don't normally see while working on a faulty battery, and army crawling would probably have given them the ultimate come-to-Jesus moment, so that was out.

I had to get the shirt out. Of course, since I was no longer attached to the bloody thing, it popped out without a problem, so I shrugged back into it, sulked back to my room, and texted Mandy to say I was running late due to an argument with the washing machine. (I have no idea what she said out loud when she saw that text, but I'm pretty sure she was giggling.)

The evening was great - Tim is the burger king, and I got devils food cake, and we watched Cockneys vs Zombies, which is one of the best giggles I've had in a while. I knocked over my first drink, quite an achievement since it was in a cup holder built into the arm of the chair I was in, and fell over my own two feet when I attempted the couch.

Then I got home, and part of the ceiling grew eight legs and dropped onto my shoulder. Being arachnaphobic, my first response was to punch my own shoulder repeatedly, so I now have a sore hand, a sore shoulder, and no clue where the Spawn of Satan actually went to.

I'm never bored. I'd like to try it sometime, preferably in a non-painful, spider-free environment.






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