not so in a spin

The washing machine was ailing…the spin cycle couldn’t handle “fast” anymore, just “medium” or even “slow”, if I did a warm or hot wash the pump failed to work at all until the machine had cooled down, sometimes this took all night. I had to coax it gently, and carefully arrange the load to avoid inbalance. I hid all of this from Flash, which was easy, it’s not as though he is going to do any washing anytime soon, ( he has been banished from the laundry, after bleaching our new towels, the dark forest green now spotted and blotched with khaki and sick yellow)

I blamed myself, it had to be the felting, something had clogged the pump, and it was all my fault, Flash would find out my secret, we would have to buy a new machine, and I would be given “the look” if I ever took wool within metres of it.

This weekend the situation came to a head, the machine had been beeping for ages, while I was on the patio, Flash came out and said “ the machine won’t empty, there must be something wrong with the pump” oh no! he knows, it’s all over!, so I told him that it hadn’t been working well for a while, and to switch it off, and after a while it would be ok, next morning we switched it on, still wouldn’t work ( no no no!), Flash got his tools…uh oh, I was out of there, nothing worse than listening to a man frustrated and swearing at an inanimate object!

After a while the swearing stopped, Flash walked into the kitchen holding a piece of machinery...it was the moment of truth, he was going to tell me the pump was clogged with felted wool…I braced myself…”bloody kids” he exclaimed…”what?” I replied
“look at this” and as he bent down and opened his palms to show me the pump, and then I saw it…wrapped around the mechanism, strangling the moving parts… a lime green, child’s hair tie
phew! off the hook...for now, and the spin cycle is working better than ever.