I Order A New Washer

At a poetry reading last year, I was introduced as the Poet Who Blogs About Washing Machines. 

I'm good in a crisis but this unsettled me.  Flexing my poems, I managed to carry on and give my planned reading, but I felt flummoxed.  (Great word, flummoxed, as is feckless ...). 

"Has it come to this?" I thought. "Adopting the stage name Someone's Mum in a moment of irony, writing the poem 'Killing the Angel  - after Virginia Woolf' (Virginia-give-up-the-domestic-martyrdom-or-die-never-having-written-anything-Woolf!), leads to this!  Moi, now known for my blog about washing machines?"

In calling my blog, I Buy A New Washer, I wanted to be known for my plumbing.  In addition to being a small disc, often made of rubber and used in taps, a 'washer' can, allegedly, be a washing machine (for sure, for short) but not in my vocabulary.  Unless it's a washer-dryer.  But then, if I was writing about washer-dryers my blog would be called, I Buy A New Washer-Dryer.  This lacks punch.

Several long months later, I can set the record straight.  Today, dear readers, I ordered a new washing machine.  My old one isn't entirely broken, but has been stuck on one very long and arduous low spinning programme for the past year, leaving my washing heavy and unwilling to dry in a hurry.

So, averse to out of town shopping and white goods decision-making, I popped into The Two Ronnies earlier and chose, from their selection of three, a washing machine with a spin speed of 1400, a door which opens and several programmes.  It's white.  With the odd silver knob.

There.