Crash, bang, wallop.....

You know they say that bad things happen in threes? Like, for example, you hear of someone breaking a leg and then you hear of someone breaking their toe and then maybe a few days later you hear that Great Aunt Alice has broken her hip?

Well, fortunately there are no broken bones in this sorry saga but plenty of broken appliances.

It started on Sunday when Mac wanted to watch a video – such antiquities in our house. We’d connected our old video to the television in our room when we got our DVD player and so Mac settled on our bed for a pleasant afternoon of watching Scooby Doo Chases Some Badly Faked Ghosts (or whatever it was called) and I left him to it. Bea, if you’re reading this, stop now. I don’t often use the TV as a babysitter but sometimes I just really, really need to.

Anyway, I was pottering about in the kitchen, creating another gastronomic masterpiece with which to dazzle my husband and child when I heard a plaintive yell from upstairs that sounded not unlike “Mummmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeee”. I leapt up the stairs, imagining all manner of bad things to have befallen my boy to find him sitting on the floor by the video in a pile of celluloid. “It made a loud cracking noise and then went all snowy and then ‘jected my video” Mac looked crushed – it was his favourite Scooby Doo adventure. He’d pulled the tape out, thinking he was rescuing it when all he’d done was pull out the tape and entangle it further. “We will get a new video mummy won’t we?” he implored, no doubt thinking of the shelf in his room full of classics in VHS format. I started a list of “things to buy before Christmas”.

On Tuesday, I’d dropped my lovely boy off at nursery (successfully avoiding any more reference to the Winter Fayre/Nursery Nativity shenanigans) and came home to put some washing in the machine. I was distracted mid load by a phone call from a double glazing salesman who would not take no for an answer. He hung up pretty sharply after I blew my whistle (handily kept for that very purpose) down the receiver and I went back to my loading.

Twenty minutes later, there was a distinctive smell of hot TCP in the air. TCP is pretty repellent as far as I’m concerned so I was gagging and opening windows. All was well. I was sorting out my salad crisper drawer, Heart FM was pouring jolly tunes out of the stereo, Middle and Senior Dog had embraced the radiator in the hallway and Junior Dog was mid nibble of a Bonio when the smell of hot TCP was joined by the smell of burning. Before I had time to say “what’s that burning smell?”, Heart FM fell silent and a large “BANG” emanated from the utility room. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’d blown up the washing machine and had tripped a number of fuses. I counted 27 garments (including two pairs of jeans) in the machine – all sopping wet and dripping soapy water everywhere. I’d overloaded the damn thing.

Another item to add to my list. David was brave in the face of two failed pieces of equipment – one necessary and the other essential.

He and Mac went late night shopping to Comet last night while I was at the hairdressers. I returned with a head full of blonde, glossy, shiny, bouncing locks and decided to get on with the hoovering that I’d started before I left. I’d completely forgotten that I’d booked in for “colour, cut and blowdry” at 4pm – poor Mac was halfway through his tea when he was hoiked out of the house and found himself sitting on the squishy sofa of Shear Class still clutching his pitta bread and humous. He still looked shell shocked when David arrived at ten to six.

Anyway, I pushed the “on” button and nothing happened. I walked over to the plug and checked that it was in fact still plugged in. It was. I went back and pushed the button again. Still nothing. Now, I’m not technically minded but I realised that something was wrong.

I didn’t dare ring David at Comet and tell him I needed a new Dyson so I shoved it back in the cupboard, vowing to look blank and act surprised when it fails to work the next time I go all domesticated.