Recovering from those wash day blues

MY washing machine broke the other day. Having put on a load of washing, I checked on the thing to see what was going on, only to see some weird symbols where the countdown timer should have been, with a large E which I presumed was for 'error, followed by some random numbers.

- ANDY PHILLIPS

The door was also locked - with my still-wet clothes inside it. I reset it to a quick rinse and hoped it would sort itself out, only for the same error message to appear once again before it finished.

I had not, in truth, been having a particularly good few days. I had seen England heavily beaten by France in the rugby at Twickenham, been dismayed by the attempt by an apparent BBC and Government alliance to silence the dissent on the refugee debate, and now this.

All sorts of streams of thought emerged. Firstly, how much was this going to cost me? Then, would I be able to get my clothes out of their captivity? And what was their rough value, in case I had to replace them?

It is at these times that things can get too much, and all you can do is to kick the stupid machine and utter some words which are usually aimed at away fans at football on a Saturday afternoon.