Pass me the sonic screwdriver

Looking quite spry for someone over 900 years old isn't he? Not the first time he's been menaced by a giant drain either - in his first incarnation he very nearly got flushed down the sink in Planet of the Giants.

A day of epic plumbing disasters, pain, frustration, blood and swearing. My washing machine flooded the kitchen a couple of times this week before giving up completely yesterday and just sitting there full of water and soggy clothes, flashing error code lights that as far as I could make out we're the equivalent of Danger! danger Will Robinson!, or perhaps (sticking with Whovianisms) the chiming of the Tardis Cloister Bell. Now, it is a truth universally acknowledged, or should be, that a man afflicted spinally in the various mechanical and degenerative ways with which I shall not bore you yet again, should avoid washing machine repair at all costs. All that pulling out of heavy machinery, contorting oneself to get at the malfunctioning part through an access hatch deliberately placed to be as inconvenient and inaccessible as possible, mopping up of messes, struggling to put all the assorted bits back where they belong, abandoning of hope that one will ever know the function of the left over bits that don't seem to go back anywhere etc etc, - its not even to be considered. This is clearly a job to be GALMIed (Get A Little Man In). Unfortunately we must live in what is laughingly referred to as the Real World, a place where such boilersuited magicians are rare and expensive and where money is a scarce (possibly even mythical) commodity.

So! This morning, there I am with my screwdriver of the wrong sort (and emphatically non sonic) and a hasty read through of the troubleshooting section of a washing machine enthusiasts forum (there are such people), grimly resigned to his fate. I feel it is probably redundant to inform you that it did not go well. Half an hour of pulling and pushing, doubling up, taking more morphine, inching the damn thing out of its little cave got me to the stage of lying on the floor with my head up against the tiny "access panel" fumbling with the aforesaid inappropriate tool in numb fingers. Eventually, somehow I got the thing open and peered into the dark recesses with my one good eye....except not only is it too dark to see anything but my advancing years have left me with long sightedness as well as my lifelong myopia and, of course, my varifocals are broken....so I can't make these weird looking objects out and have to rely on touch....using my numb its-like-wearing-thick-rubber-gloves fingers. An hour later I have at least worked out where the thing I'm trying to fix is, unfortunately my efforts have failed to disconnect it as the circlip holding the drain hose onto the sump is of a convenient patent design....remarks concerning it from my forum gurus are limited to the exhortation to remove it, said flippantly, in passing, as if no one on the planet could possibly be ignorant of how to manipulate its idiosyncratic and unillustrated release mechanism. I stop. I rest. I google. salvation is at hand! Some blessed philanthropist has made a video showing how to do it....unfortunately he feels an appropriate camera angle for documenting the delicate operation consists of pointing the lens up his nose and I am as ignorant as I was before investing three minutes of my life that I will never see again. One thing I have achieved is to slice open my finger on the metal edge of the access port. I can't feel those bits of my hands so its not painful but it does mean everything is getting slick and sticky with blood - which isn't helping. Jake by this time is thoroughly alarmed and shocked by my vocabulary and is alternating between lying across my sprawled lower extremities and "helping" by shoving his nose into all areas. Eventually the circlip comes off in my hand of its own volition, I think it was getting bored.

I paused at this moment as I knew enough to be aware of all the water still in the sump above this drain hose. Carefully I placed towels everywhere and manoeuvred a container under it. Ten seconds later a tidal wave of cold dirty water drenched my head and torso to the skin. At least the towels had stopped it going any further ....at this point Jake stood up and tipped his water bowl over... Sigh...how helpful, at least now I can't get any wetter.

I shall resist the temptation to continue with my tale of how I dealt with the unbelievable mass of sludge and detritus blocking the drain, of my battle to reassemble the device against parts that seemed to have expanded or contracted so as no longer to fit, helped by Jake's insistence that every nut , bolt and screw carefully placed where it would be handy and safe for reassembly should be thoroughly scattered and chased around the wet, dirty floor....somehow it got more or less done and the damn thing could be excruciatingly edged back into its little home. It now seems to be working - no one is more surprised by that than me. In three or four days I may feel up to trying to restore order to the ravaged kitchen but in the meantime I am going to lie as still as possible, rattling with a pharmacy worth of assorted drugs and stretched on a hard board placed under my sagging sofa cushions.

It is time someone invented sonic screwdrivers and washing machines that can be repaired by waving one at it dramatically and muttering about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow or recharging the fluid link.