My life is going with a bang!

Or to be more accurate, two rather formidable bangs. The first one was delivered in the middle of the night by this innocent looking bedside lamp. I’d woken in my usual way to toddle off to the loo and leant across to switch on the light. It didn’t so much ‘switch’ as ‘explode’ with a rather pretty shower of sparks and the total disappearance of the light bulb, leaving me in darkness wondering what had hit me. Much staggering about in the darkness to switch on the central light and to go in search of the bed when I’d switched it off.

The next morning I went on a hunt to find the bulb, it took a bit of doing. There was no trail of glass to lead the way and as far as I could see, no debris of any kind. Eventually it turned up, lurking under one of the pillows – don’t ask!

But an even more dramatic explosion was to follow a day later, when I switched on the washing machine as usual and left it to get on with its work, unmolested as usual, and settled down for a well earned cup of tea. How foolish of me. It wasn’t long before I was interrupted by a very loud bang which was followed by a extraordinary crashing and rattling coming from my usually tame machine. I switched it off PDQ and retrieved my washing which was largely white bed linen, now covered in black rubber smuts – oh frabjus joy! It wasn’t quite as bad as the machine in my picture but it was bad enough. When the local engineer came out to see it the following morning, he discovered that the drum was cracked. Oh frabjus joy kalloo kallay! Now I have a new machine which is so complicated it takes me hours to work out how to use it. Lies down in a now dark room with cold compress on head.

But the fates hadn’t finished with me even then. I felt I had earned a nice quiet evening in front of the television but lo and behold that evil machine had a treat in store for me too. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me! It had decided to relinquish such niceties as colour and entertain me in black and white – cue for the visit of another engineer who is due here in half an hour. I’m now lying down in my darkened room with two cold compresses on my head, groaning dramatically.