Great Chitter Chatter - Stories from Loud Voices

How wrecked do your kitchen appliances have to get before you’ll replace them? Some phases of my life have seemed like ongoing wars of attrition against objects that are there to serve us. I lived in a terrible flat in East London once, both the kitchen and bathroom floors were rotting away but my bedroom was pentagonal which somehow made it worth it. Anyway, we had a fridge freezer which was so old that it had one of those little freezer compartments in the top that kept the whole affair cold. 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) fractured 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 rented property I lived in when I was younger had one of those washer driers that seem to pose a significant 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 handling the controls, loud doesn’t hardly cover it, 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 it wouldn’t work. Eventually I thought I’d have a look and see if I could fix it. Turns out I could. My not considerable engineering skills immediately told me that flicking the switch to the ‘on’ position would be an intelligent place to start.

I sometimes wonder whatever happened to upright washing machines? OK so they weren’t very efficient kitchen appliances cleaning wise, took up space that’s available to use as a work surface if you have a front opening unit but they didn’t leak or flood the kitchen when they went wrong, you could take things out or throw extra things in mid-wash, even if you’re well organised you need to open the machine mid cycle from time to time, if you’re like me it’s almost every single time!

Alright, your integrated washing machines can wash your clothes in a trice while the upright’s central do-dad rotates gently from side to side at about 45 degrees hour after hour but that inefficiency meant that if you left things in your pockets they’d come out damp but unharmed the other side. The one I remember wasn’t even plumbed in, when not in use I think my grandma just covered it over with a tablecloth. To use it you had to pull it over to the sink, attach it to the kitchen taps with a hose to fill it, switch it on and wait as it sort of fidgeted your clothes clean. You had a pair of wooden tongs to push the clothes under the surface of the water like a sack full of kittens but my nan, safety conscious as she was never let you push the clothes under while it was going because it could “Rip your arm off!” She certainly had a very inflated opinion of this white goods’ death dealing capabilities. I could imagine Daddy Long Legs besting it in a fair fight and we all know how easily separated they are from their limbs.

When the weather was nice then the clothes would go out on the line, but in the winter or when it was wet there would be so many clothes horses shambling around the house it was like a dressed up dressage! Gran would never consider wasting money on anything as frivolous as condenser tumble dryers, (and her idea of an integrated dishwasher was putting a scouring pad on a fork if the washing up water was too hot) notwithstanding the fact I had childhood asthma and my granddad had emphysema, luckily their house was so draughty that the damp never really became a problem. Provided the clothes had been run thorough the mangle properly. There’s a thing. I’ve already started seeing toys I used to have in antique shops and things I used to use regularly my daughter will only see in museums of social history. Feeling old much? You bet!