On the face of it, my relationship with my washing machine is rather a simple one: it washes my clothes when it feels like it, and I pay it lip service.
Bill Bryson wrote that he would just as soon get excited about his washing machine than his car. I am inclined to agree. A car is merely a tool for moving one from point A to point Z. If it does not break down at points B through Y, so much the better.
A washing machine, however - my washing machine .... My Ariston AV-149 front loading washing machine with 7.5 kg capacity, a top speed of 1000 rpm, and twelve different wash cycles (from a three hour, all-cleansing epic to an über-gentle cycle just for sheep), is a thing of beauty. Or rather, was a thing or beauty.
When it first came home, it was sleek, quiet, efficient. It sparkled like morning TV presenters' teeth. And it disposed of dirt with the moral ambiguity of an old, spaghetti western bounty hunter. Now its just a squat, jaded, hospital-white clunker.
In its heyday, it could knock off 40 nappies, 6 towels, and clothes for two working adults and one hyper-active toddler in a week without so much as a gurgle of complaint. Nowadays, I am lucky if it can make it through a cycle without gouging a hole in the wall, or regurgitating a long lost sock in a puddle of grey water on the laundry floor.
In truth, it is long past time I put her out to pasture. One fine day, I will carry her down to the kerb, give her one final wipe down, and leave her to crumble into rust flakes.
Until then, the battle of wills rages on.
(P.S. This is not a metaphor. I really am talking about my washing machine.)
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