Put It On Facebook – We Have A New Dishwasher

A few months ago, our relatively new dishwasher went kaput accompanied by a rather large explosion. Although less than two years old, it was well out of warranty as J had bought it when the house was being built and had stored it in the garage for about a year before it was installed. Bad mistake!

It had only been in service for about six months when the bottom drawer (it’s a two drawer top-loading model) stopped working. This fault caused the top drawer to stop working, but by researching this piece of mechanical crap on the internet I was able to get the top bit working again.

We called out a repair guy who stripped the bottom section and stood there shaking his head. Major problem – the heating element had gone although I couldn’t see any signs of burnt wires. Anyway, he wanted €150 for his visit and another €150-€300 for fixing the element. I said goodbye to him and showed him the door, after reluctantly giving him the ‘call-out’ fee of €150. Added to the original €900 we (sorry I) paid for this machine it was becoming a rather expensive bit of useless kitchen equipment. Anyway, the top drawer continued to work satisfactorily until the night of the great explosion and then it was no more.

Enter the Marigolds as Guy and I were regularly up to our elbows in suds as we washed the dishes by hand. I don’t think J knows how to put Marigolds on – I never saw her at the kitchen sink!  Despite my initial enthusiasm for washing dishes by hand I quickly got fed up with the evening ritual. By this time, J was tearing her hair out begging for a new machine which I refused to buy and so it went on Facebook. ‘I am dishwasherless’, was the posting.

 Well you’d have thought that J’s extended family in Manchester had been wiped out by a rogue meteor such was the outpouring of grief and sympathy for her plight.   

Given the original price of the dishwasher and the fact that I thought I knew what the problem was (a couple of small motors), I called out another repairman. Like the first he stood there shaking his head and kept using the word, ‘impossible’, over and over again.

He made a couple of calls and said it again, ‘impossible’. ‘What’s impossible’ I pleaded. ‘I’m not allowed to touch this machine because someone else has taken parts off of it. It’s impossible’, he said.

By this time I was fearing another €150 call-out fee but he refused to take any payment. I think he was embarrassed.  I gave him a nice bottle of wine and sent him on his way.

And so, within an hour of the repair man leaving, the internet was buzzing and a new dishwasher was on its way. Thankfully, one which does not have flashing lights, does not have two drawers and does not have banks of sensors and electronic chips. It’s a straightforward, plain old dishwasher and as a sort of thanks, my wife was kind enough to put my unlimited generosity on Facebook. ‘I’ve got a dishwasher’, was the post.

Life is so exciting on Facebook.  

 

The Escape

It wasn’t like Steve to be a bit down. Ever since I’d know him he was chipper, would talk to anyone about anything.  Dee, too, was not her usual self. The confident American hot-shot lawyer who could tear you to shreds in an instant with her tongue, was now strangely subdued.  It was the drugs of course. The daily diet of drugs which did it.

Tom had stopped taking his drugs. They were plastic coated and so he could stick them under his tongue and spit them out later without the staff knowing. He’d stopped taking them for about a week now and things were becoming clearer. He’d almost worked out how he, Steve and Dee had been ‘forced’ into this place, this laboratory, or hospital or clinic or whatever it was. They had been on a night out reliving the days when they were BT’s ‘big deal’ team.  Those were the days!  

Yes – they’d been for a curry and somehow they’d been drugged and carted off to this place. It was irrelevant now. What he needed to do was get out of there. He’d tried it once before. He wasn’t sure when, but he’d made it as far as the main reception before the guards gently escorted him back to the room where he, Steve, Dee and a few others spent their days in beds facing the same way. Not speaking. Not smiling. Not doing anything. Every now and then, one of them would be wheeled out and would return later and they would not wake for another 24 hours. And then there would be more drugs.

He’d told Steve about his plan to leave and hoped he’d understand but his glazed eyes were not a positive sign. ”‘I’m doing a runner’, he’d told Steve. ‘I cant take you with me but I’ll be back’. Steve nodded but Tom was sure he did not have a clue what he was on about.

It didn’t take long to find a locker with male clothing and a white doctor’s coat in it and he changed into them in the nearest toilet. They fitted too. ‘Just like in the movies’, he thought. As he wandered the corridors looking for the door to the grass square which would lead him to reception and hopefully escape, he noticed the various operating theatres. There was one for kidneys and one for livers and lungs and yet another for hearts. It hit him immediately. They were all guinea pigs. Human’s drugged to the eyeballs and then used for transplant operations to teach medical students how to do it properly without risking hospital patient’s lives. God knows how many kidneys, lungs  and other organs had been in and out of his body. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Eventually, he found the door leading to the grass square. He remembered this from before. He’d gone only a few yards across the grass when a hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned fearing the worst. Fearing he’d be taken back like before but was relieved to see Steve. Steve thrust a few bottles of drugs into his hands and said he’d need them.  Poor Steve – he turned and wandered away in his zombie-like state, heading back to his room, his bed, his prison.

Tom crossed the square and then discarded his white coat before entering the reception room. The clock said it was 3.30am and of course it was quiet. The security guards were in their room at the back of reception. As usual, they were not focused – reading newspapers or playing Solitaire on their PCs no doubt.  The main door was right in front of the security booth. ‘No way out there’, he thought, but there was another glass door at the side of reception which, although bolted, might be worth trying. Tom looked around the room and spotted the one moveable thing which might be heavy enough to break the glass. He picked up the metal stool and threw it at the centre of the door which shattered into a million pieces. He ran outside and looked for the best way to go to escape the guards who would be following him. Luckily there were some streets close by which had lanes and alleyways leading off them. He ran down one, turned left, then right and kept going. He didn’t have a clue where he was. It was definitely London – a street sign confirmed that but which way to go? The guards would be in cars by now, scouring the streets looking for him. He had no coat or jacket so would be easily spotted. He moved along the doorways, all the time looking for a bus heading in his direction, any direction! Damn Ken Livingstone for bringing in buses with doors – what he’d give to see a good old London Routemaster with its open back door. He could have jumped on to one of those and pleaded with the conductor to let him ride without paying.

As he half ran, half walked, all the time with searing pain in his sides and stomach, Tom wondered how he would tell his story. It sounded incredible. A hospital, where drugged, kidnapped people were being used as transplant guinea pigs. Even Julie would think he was bonkers. Anyway – how long had he been away? No idea.

All he wanted was a tube station or a taxi. Eventually he found a station - Seven Sisters. He was in North London but, of course, it was closed. He was an idiot. Everybody knew the tubes did not run through the night.

He was fading fast. The pain was excruciating. Then he spotted a taxi dropping some people off. He waited until they paid their fare and then started to get in the cab but the lady driving it said she was heading home it was the end of her shift. He got out and sank to the floor. That was it – he would lie there until they found him and took him back. He didn’t care anymore. The drugs were not so bad after all he thought.

Then I woke myself up. Yup - it was a dream. A horrible one. What did it mean? It probably means that J is watching too many medical soaps on TV! 

42 Years On

We lived in one of the worst areas of Glasgow. It wasn’t planned like that – it was planned as a new start to take families out of the grime of early sixties Glasgow city and move them to the fresher air of the country. The problem was that whilst the houses, the streets and the schools in Easterhouse were all brand new, nobody had thought to put in any recreational facilities for the thousands of kids who were suddenly transported into a social wilderness. No parks. No football pitches. No libraries. Nothing!

But it wasn’t all bad.   There was the canal where kids fell in with astonishing regularity. There were the two lochs where you could fish if you were prepared to walk the 3 miles to get to them and then there were the floodlit streets, illuminated by yellow sodium lights which allowed the boys to play football late into the night. Adults, of course, objected to normal size footballs battering into their cars and so we played with tennis balls and that’s why Scottish footballers of the time were hailed as ‘tanner-ba’ players. The ball cost a tanner – a sixpence and if you could play football with a tanner-ba, you could play with anything and anybody.

We used to play directly outside my house as the street was straight, was well lit by street lamps and the residents usually took notice when we pleaded, ‘aw mister – don’t park your car there, that’s right on our pitch’.  

And so we played our games, night after night. One side Rangers- the other side Celtic.

And just occasionally a Mr Jim Craig would pass us by and encourage us. That Mr Craig was to become one of the first British footballers to win the cherished European Cup with Celtic in 1967. A trophy not even the mighty Liverpool or even mightier Manchester United had come close to winning, although once Celtic broke the deadlock, Man Utd won it the following year and of course, Liverpool won it several times in the 70s and 80s.

Although a top class footballer, Jim Craig lived in a rented council house just round the corner from the Cupples’. I remember once going and knocking on his door to ask for his autograph. His wife answered and I sheepishly asked if Mr Craig would be so kind as to sign the grubby bit of paper I handed over. He did of course – he was a good guy despite being a Celtic player.

After he won the European Cup, he must’ve moved house because I don’t recall seeing him around but although I was a Rangers fanatic, it was quite something of a schoolboy boast to say I lived ‘next’ to a European Cup winner.   

The thing which strikes me now is that Jim Craig’s equivalent today would be earning well over £1 million per year as a footballer and would be staying in one of the wealthier suburbs of Glasgow. To imagine a star player today living in a council house is unthinkable. And he wasn’t just a footballer. Jim Craig was a qualified dentist but decided football was a more interesting career than looking at the nicotine stained teeth of your average Glaswegian.

So, as Manchester United head into their Champions League final tonight, it will all be a totally different scenario from when Celtic triumphed over Inter Milan on May 25^th 1967. The first British team to win it and with a team full of players, not one of whom was from foreign shores. In fact not a single player was from outside the Glasgow boundary, they all lived within 30 minutes of Parkhead. Astonishing!

 

The Logic of the French

One of the more liberated aspects of French life is for youngsters over the age of 14 to be allowed to ride 50cc scooters on the public roads once they’ve sat a test which encompasses both classroom and practical, on the road, work.

As I stood before the girl organizing the date of Guy’s test, attempting to ask her in my very bad French what was required all she could say was ‘make sure he brings his scooter with him’.

‘But he can’t cause he’s not passed the test. He’s not allowed to ride it until he’s passed the test’, I replied. ‘The police might stop him. Don't you supply him with a scooter to do the test?'

‘No monsieur, we don't supply scooters if he doesn’t bring his scooter, he can’t take the test’, she said.

I left shaking my head at French logic and €150 poorer - the fee for the test!     

It's Another Bank Holiday

It's a UK Bank Holiday today so there's no blog. Despite residing in France, I still like the thought of UK Bank Holidays so I'm having the day off.

But I do want to report that my Blog was hacked into over the weekend and a faked picture of me totally wasted and sleeping under my neighbour's table was put onto my 'welcome' page. I'm consulting the authorities to see what can be done about this intrusion. Thankfully I was able to sober up from our 4-day Baby Shower party and return my Blog site to its normal state.

More about the party next week.