Mario the Dishwasher

My dishwasher decided to stop working last Sunday. This happened without warning and just after the thing had filled itself with water. I hate it when this happens as I’ve become rather used to having a machine dealing with my mucky plates. The pump appeared to have seized completely so I tried my standard “bloke” remedies: pressing buttons randomly; switching it on and off again; then shaking it vigorously on the basis that the hysterical device needed to get a grip and pull itself together. None of this worked.

Having the patience of a sinner I decided to give it up for dead and headed off down to the local white goods emporium to buy a new one. I’ll not embarrass them by naming them as such but they sound like they should be the family business of Paddington Bear’s miserable bastard neighbour. I had been to the shop a couple of weeks before to buy a new TV for my mother-in-law and had experienced the level of service that I have come to expect from such establishments: when actually wanting to purchase an item it is impossible to get served: only when idly browsing does one become swarmed by spotty faced shop assistants wanting to sell spectacularly overpriced extended warrantee policies.

I did manage to get the TV for my mother-in-law thanks to a helpful young gentleman called Jamie who even carried the box to the car for us. Unfortunately (or, as it turned out, actually quite fortunately) Jamie was on his day off last Sunday. I was standing, credit card at the ready, all set to spend several hundred pounds on a new dishwasher and yet seemingly surrounded by a cloak of invisibility. It’s not just this shop, either. I’m sure this is why Comet went bust as it was seemingly impossible to buy anything there either. If I could work out what it is that I do in these shops I’d patent it and sell it to the military because it’s got to be far cheaper than stealth fighter technology. After 20 minutes of standing around like a spare part I gave up, wrote down the model number of my desired dishwasher and went home to buy one online.

Having failed to acquire a new appliance I turned my attention to my other problem: the old one was sitting filled with water and semi-soiled dishes and cutlery. Emptying the dishes was easy enough but I thought that my best bet with the water was to syphon it off. I removed the waste pipe from under the sink and was sprayed by high pressure dishwater. The problem, it turned out, was that a cocktail stick had, at some point, been dropped down the sink and caused a blockage which eventually found its way back up to the dishwasher pump. I cleared this and the pump started to reluctantly pump water through. After flushing this with some water mixed with bleach everything started working again. I was saved the expense of a new appliance!

The lessons from this are firstly that I am far too impatient when it comes to broken down appliances but secondly that I’m actually not too bad with plumbing matters when it comes to it. I’ve actually fixed a few bits over the years whether it is blocked drains,  leaking radiators or unflushable toilets. I was trying to think of a great plumbing role model and the only one I could think of was Mario from the Super Mario Brothers games. I‘ve tried playing these but found myself to be completely useless at them. However, my grandfather was also a plumber so maybe this is really what I should be doing? Having said that, I think it is something of a jump from fixing mistreated dishwashers to maintaining nuclear powered submarines on the Clyde. Perhaps I’ll just stick to swearing at computers?