Happy Christmas.

There is a kerfuffle, whilst we manipulate white goods.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t fix it in the end,” he says, as we lift the bottom of his own washing machine into his cluttered van.

“I’m very grateful for all your efforts,” I reply, very genuinely. Lending me his own washing machine was not only helpful and touching – it was beyond the call of duty by anyone’s definition.

The Washing Machine Man has admitted defeat. He cannot get the part he needs, as Hotpoint will not give it to him. He advises that I will have to ring Hotpoint and get their own people to mend it. [Note - since then I have done this, and Evil Corporation Hotpoint came and fixed my washing machine, their van overspilling with surplus appropriate washing machine parts.]

We talk about this for a while as we lean on the tailgate. Life is getting tougher for the old independent Washing Machine Men, once so much part and parcel of the fabric of British life. Their pliers and pencils stored behind the ear are being replaced with computer diagnostics and probes; the slightly scary wives with message pads next to their telephones superceded by call centres and internet booking; the battered vans carrying a working life’s worth of collected tools and rescued bits and pieces disappearing from the roads in favour of brightly branded and fleet insured new models.

I may write to TV’s Jimmy Perry and David Croft and suggest they write an ensemble sitcom about the heyday of Britain’s Washing Machine Repair industry, perhaps ending with a slightly bitter-sweet final episode set in my scullery in which the team go their separate ways after a moving soliloquy about flow valves. It would surely be a hit.

“I’m really sorry I broke your machine as well,” I repeat, for about the twenty-seventh time in ten minutes.

“Don’t worry about it,” he concedes, climbing ruefully into the cab.

“I’m sure it’s probably just a filter,” I offer helpfully. “Or a hose or something.”

The van pulls out from the drive, turns left past Short Tony’s and out of the Village. I turn and walk silently back towards the front door.

I see his van backing into the drive; I scoot to the front door eagerly.

The Washing Machine Man has been having difficulty getting the part he requires. Since then, the washing has been mounting up. A huge pile rises up from the scullery floor: t-shirts, trousers, towels, jumpers and underwear. It dominates the room, making it nigh-impossible to get to the essential utilities. The bottom of the mound is solidifying; I have been concerned for some days that if I do not do something quickly to reduce the heap, the council will come round and list it.

I open the door, shifting awkwardly in my cricket jockstrap, which is the only thing I have left to wear under my jeans.

The Washing Machine Man spoke to me over the phone – his plan, in the absence of a new replacement part, is to install a reconditioned temporary part, which will at least allow me to get some washing done. I am grateful for this, as there does come a point when taking laundry to the neighbours’ houses ceases to become a one-off favour, and becomes an ongoing expectation. Big A, and Eddie, and the Chipper Barman are good friends, and have been very understanding and accommodating, but I have had to widen my net further to include people like mothers of the Toddler’s friends at nursery, and I suspect enough is enough.

It is a good plan, only marred by the fact that it transpires that I thought he meant that he would bring a temporary replacement part, whereas he was talking about a temporary replacement washing machine.

He pulls out my old washing machine and installs the new one, and promises to chase up the new part as soon as he can. I now have a scullery that is dominated both by a mountainous pile of soiled laundry and a broken spare washing machine.

I thank him for his clever plan and begin to chip away at clothing.

Apologies to everyone who had problems accessing Private Secret Diary this week.

This was due to a number of things, the main one being that I really haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m doing. Thank you if you tried to contact me or left a message on the Facebook group. All should be sorted now, although I have no idea how this ’sorted’ happened, which only creates more disquiet in my mind. Anyway, the entire back-end disappeared for two days, so if anybody had a back-end landing on them in the middle of the week then I’m very sorry.

Now there is a new version of Wordpress out, and it wants me to upgrade. My life is hell.

In the meantime, I did something a bit different, and interviewed Katy Evans-Bush. Katy’s been a reader here since about the year dot, and has a new collection of poetry out (‘Me and the Dead’), which is bloody exciting, as I don’t usually move in such circles. Private Secret Diary’s literary influences are fairly self-evident to the educated reader, and in a bid to widen the intellectual tone of things here, I asked her some searching and intense questions about her creative ouevre…

(more…)

‘Brrringggg brrringggg!’

(NB that was the sound of the telephone ringing, as transcribed onto the page).

It is Big A. We chat inconsequentially for a couple of minutes, before he announces that he has a favour to ask me.

I am immediately on my guard. This means that he will want me to look after his chickens whilst he goes away. As the premier chicken expert in the Village, I am always being asked to look after people’s chickens. And whilst that is no hassle, it is a bit of a hassle, and I do not need the extra eggs.

Big A has three rescued battery chickens, including one that he calls ‘J Lo’ because it has an enormous sort of growth on its arse. They are good natured birds, and I do owe him a favour for the use of his washing machine. I take a deep breath and ask him what his favour is.

“Can you put my bins out for me?”

I am a bit stunned by this. “Don’t you want me to look after the chickens?” I ask, to which he replies that the people over the road are happy to do that.

Sacked!!! I am sacked as first-choice chicken-looker-after!!! I replace the receiver angrily. I am good enough to do the bins, but not good enough to do the chickens.

The next morning, I wander over to get his bins. An ex-battery chicken with an enormous arse protrusion gazes at me through the garden gate, giving me a slightly disdainful look. This chicken seems a bit above herself. I might be a mere binman, but she is just Jenny from the Flock.

The Washing Machine Man should be coming tomorrow, with the spare part.

I’ve been an extremely bad friend and not yet written anything about Venn That Tune, by Andrew (who long-term readers will know as Salvadore, who guest-edited here for a while).

Andrew’s the reason why this journal started in an indirect sort of fashion, in that we both wrote comedy together for a while before he left the partnership to become successful. I went on to Village-based material, whereas he started exploring the potential of maths, and came up with the song graph idea that lots of people seem to think ‘just happened’ on the internet.

Anyway, the book’s very funny, especially the footnotes section. I’ve bought it for Christmas for my cousin who was in a pre-Genesis Phil Collins band, and if you have any relatives or friends with similar early prog-rock connections, I strongly advise you to do the same. Or just anyone who likes music.

Andrew’s done a bit of press, but was unfortunately hit by the Daily Telegraph, who inflicted a ‘hejoked’ on him – no doubt to maintain the balance between jealous and threatened so-called MSM media and a mere blogger who has written a book. A ‘hejoked’ is a common device that any comic or humorist dreads – it is a phrase frequently used by writers with no sense of humour whatsoever, and is often accompanied by an unwanted exclamation mark.

Essentially, the concept behind a ”hejoked’ is that you can report the funniest, wittiest, pithiest, cleverest, most killer comic line ever, and utterly destroy it by using the phrase ‘he joked’ as a suffix.

“I’ll have an empty arm,” he joked.

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” he joked.

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me,” he joked.

I have never really seen a ‘hejoked’ in action before and it was terrible to behold. But despite that, the book’s doing well, and I do urge you to ‘check it out’, as they say on the Internet.

Pants situation: down to two pairs once more.

Which seems to have gone worryingly smoothly, given that I’m running this thing myself now. But PHP is just ZX Basic with PR.

Please leave a comment if you encounter any problems, such as feeds not working, or being unable to leave comments etc.

Thank you to Gordon for recommending ‘A Small Orange’ hosting, who have been incredibly good, despite sounding ridiculous. It is his fault if anything breaks. I chose not to go with Hotpoint in the end.

There is a new ‘top commentators’ widget that tries to link back to you if you’re particularly active in the comments box, as a way of trying to get over the endless blogroll dilemma thing. We’ll see how it goes – if it gets clogged up with spam or whatever then I’ll take it off.

Testing, 123…