06 March 2008

Gadget hell

My appliances hate me.

Over the past month, my dishwasher gave up the ghost, my laptop decided that it would disable half its memory, my phone line thought it would be fun to sound like I'm making calls in a howling, crackling gale, and yesterday the washing machine decided to protest at being used daily for the last year and a half (I suspect it had an easier life during the reign of the last owners, a gay couple in their late 50s) and refused to budge any further than the cold water fill cycle.

Some of these problems have been easily (but not cheaply) rectified. We have a shiny new dishwasher, complete with labels on the controls and an instruction manual (both missing from the last, nameless, 15-year-old model - we'd been washing our plates on cycle 1 of 6 ever since we moved in, without ever having a clue as to what it actually did).

We have new memory in the laptop, meaning you can actually open Word, Excel and the internet all at the same time without the screen freezing. Which is a bonus.

The telephone line turned out to be water in the cable box outside (rather worrying, but that's the cable company's problem not mine), and was fixed within 12 hours by Virgin Media, in a remarkable display of efficiency.

The washing machine is sitting malevolently in the corner of the kitchen while we decide what action to take. I've suggested hitting it with a big stick, a la Basil Fawlty, although that's mainly for the purposes of making me feel better, rather than actually repairing the thing.

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