“I’ve always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I’ve never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.”
John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
There are reasons why people like me should avoid most things practical; namely that we are generally useless. Stick to what you know, as little as it may amount to.
Last week my three-year-old washing machine refused to play ball and displayed an error message on its fancy digital display – “E20”. I seem to recall my mother never had a washing machine with any kind of display but that they also rarely broke down.
For no reason that I can recall I decided I would attempt to fix this rather than pay £50 to make a cup of tea for someone to do it in a flash. What could be so difficult?
The first problem was the instruction manual – the printed version – made no mention of E20 but did offer a fault-finding table. Sadly, there was no explicit guidance for enthusiastic, unskilled halfwits.
With that optimistic Friday feeling I pulled the machine out from under the kitchen and fumbled like a nervous teenager around the back of a bike shed. Why I decided to unscrew the particular pipe – the cold water flow – God knows. In a jiffy, I was holding a mini-hosepipe that had gone mad.
It writhed about in my hand like a demented snake, spewing water out at a rate I quickly figured would turn my kitchen into a lake and, given the temperatures, a frozen one.
I put a call to my neighbour who knows about these things. He was an hour at least away as I contemplated the insurance form; they would never believe it.
Realising the only bucket I had was outside I had no option but to drop the out-of-control pipe to retrieve the bucket allowing it to spew uncontrolled on the wooden floor. I guess this lack of analytical control makes me unsuitable to become an airline pilot…which is good news as I am scared of heights.
The bucket was a block of ice so the handle promptly fell off but I managed to get it inside and direct the mad snake into it. And still, the water poured out until I, miraculously, finally found the cut-off tap.
I had no idea how I found the tap but sat there soaked to the skin almost weeping with joy. The room was awash and my Home Bargains mop looked out of its depth.
Eventually, my neighbour Chris arrived and could barely control his amusement as I stood there still drenched. After a while of prodding and poking we decided that this was indeed a job for someone who actually knew what they were doing.
Thank God for people like Les I thought along with “never again!”
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