A spot of bother

A spot of bother.
The following is an absolutely true story. None of the characters have had their names changed.
Last Wednesday my cordless vacuum broke. A cordless vacuum cleaner is as essential to what Aristotle called ‘The Good Life’ as literature and fine wine. Life would hardly be worth living without the small luxury of a cordless vaccuum cleaner. It is the parmesan cheese to my Samuel Pepys.
Of course we have a real vacuum cleaner. It is in the vacuum cleaner cupboard which also serves as the mop-and-bucket cupboard, the outdoor-footwear cupboard, the golf-clubs-we-no-longer-use cupboard and the I’ll-just-put-this-in-here-for-the-time-being cupboard. Getting the vacuum out involves much clattering, boot hurling and catapulting mop handles that nearly have your eye out. This ends in a flailing pirouette with your foot in a bucket. Then you have to find an adjacent plug socket, invariably under a sideboard or a chair, whilst for even the simplest spillage the cord winds itself serpentinely and inexplicably twice round the sofa. Sanity demanded a new cordless.
My local appliance shop doesn’t sell vacuum cleaners so it meant ordering from the internet. Literally seconds of consumer research of stockists led me to AO, handily placed on Google. My choice was purely alphabetic.
Of course then you have to get through.
‘We record all our calls for training purposes, and to extract as much commercially saleable data as possible just in case you don’t actually purchase anything’.
Next up is security. For this they want my name (again), my address (again) and my postcode (again). Then they want my mother’s maiden name and the name of my first pet. Finally they need the year I lost my virginity and the nuclear codes to my house. (Fortunately these are the same, for convenience sake).
I spoke to a very nice girl called Sharon and ordered my vacuum cleaner. Although I do it a lot, ordering online presages a period of anxiety until I actually take delivery of the item. Its psychological I think, and probably dates back to the great Blue Peter badge fiasco of 1963 when I was nine years old. I had put the phone down and taken a couple of yoga breaths when I heard a wasp like buzz, a dull bang and a faint shriek from the utility room.
Dashing in I found my startled wife, rigid and blinking rapidly with a slight frizz to her hair and blue smoke and an acrid smell coming from the washing machine. I looked from the now defunct appliance to my now possibly defunct wife. To be honest, I wasn’t sure which to deal with first as they are both out of warranty. Gingerly I shepherded my wife out of the utility room. I say gingerly because I am one of those chaps who always gets a belt of static from the car door handle so I wasn’t taking any chances. I sat her down to regain her senses. Of course that would take a while. She has been in a state of mild shock since I proposed to her six years ago. I have always suspected she wasn’t concentrating at the time and misheard.
I got Sharon again.
‘Hello Mr. Cornall, may I call you Nicholas?’
‘Certainly Sharon, as that’s my name, anything else would be merely absurd’
‘Pardon?’
‘Doesn’t matter Sharon. Do you do washing machines?’
My coffee was cold by now. I tipped it into the sink, flipped on the kettle and opened the dishwasher. Or rather I didn’t open the dishwasher. The handle, super glued in place for a while now, snapped off leaving a shard of dagger like lethality by which to open it. The on/off switch had been nestling under its housing for the last two years, requiring the end of a fork to operate the thing. There was always a frisson of whether you were going to fuse yourself to the National Grid every time you wanted the Denby cleaned. These are piano player’s hands. I can’t afford to have them lacerated on a daily basis. They are like Picasso’s hands, uninsurable. I might be able to afford to insure one of them I suppose, just, in which case my bass player would no doubt suggest not the left one. ‘I do that bit’, he often informs me resentfully.
‘Is that Sharon?’
They had dishwashers too
‘Not really your day is it Nick? You don’t mind me calling you Nick?’
My wife was still in a state of shock and I was close to joining her if I was honest. Perhaps a nice dinner later, with a good bottle of wine might rescue a trying day. I largely do the cooking. My wife claims she can cook, but mainly in the sense that I claim to be able to play the accordion. I would see what was in the freezer. And by now I can hear you saying, ‘Don’t do it Nick’. Bear in mind I was much younger last Wednesday and more impetuous. Two of the freezer’s plastic trays are broken. This is largely because the freezer gets frosted up when, for the umpteenth time that month I have left the door ajar. Then you have to grunt and wrestle to get the tray out and they snap. This means you have to open the door slowly and grab any errant pork chop or, infuriatingly, a half open packet of petit-pois as they come flying out. Today, inevitably, was the day I broke the third and final tray irrevocably.
I don’t know how long I have had that freezer. Nobody knows how long they have had their freezer. There are only two ways to date a freezer. One is to saw it in half and count the rings. The other is to lug it in the back of the car down to ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ next time they are in your area.
‘Louis Quinze, I’d say, possibly as late as mid-Georgian. They come as a pair unfortunately, quite worthless without the other one. Please don’t leave it on the drive as you go out’.
I have tried, fruitlessly, to get replacement trays by indentifying the make and model. ‘Fmythe and fons, of Knightfbridge’. The serial number is in roman numerals and the instructions are in the loft, on parchment, illuminated by monks.
Sharon was pleased to hear from me though. By now I was ‘Lovey’ and we had become quite flirtatious. In my Bachelor days I may have asked her to dinner that evening. She wouldn’t have come of course, fearing that with my luck so far I would inevitably crash the car and AO don’t do cars apparently.
Of course I have exaggerated the circumstances but all the above is essentially true. Lockdown has been tight, my wife’s business has been hard hit. This is supposed to be cancelled out by a reduction in living costs, holidays, meals out and the like. It was hardly January and I was already thousands down.
The next bit is also quite true.
By late afternoon I felt the need for a little restorative cheese on toast. Gin would have been more calming but it was only half past three.
Now here’s a thing.
'Bosch' is exactly the sound a built in double oven makes when the grill comes crashing down having given up the will to live, irreparably shearing off its fittings thereby ending its usefulness to society at large. Bosch is also German for, (I am morally certain of this) ‘For fuck’s sake, seriously?’
‘Sharon?’
My coffee was cold again. I went to the microwave, hand poised on the door catch. I hesitated.
‘Nah, I’ll make a fresh cup’.