It's a very sad day.

There are many thing I can live without, some things I hope not to have to live without and a few things I never want to live without.

I'm talking things, not people or relationships, down to it stuff, trappings, frills.
I can live without the big posh house ( wish I didn't, but can and still be very happy)
Live without the big flash car ( am so happy with my little Renault that even now I get in it and smile and tell it I love it)
Clothes and name brands and designer? Ptthhhhhhhhhhh.

I can't live without a washing machine. I say I can't, I can but I am very grumpy about it.
My washing machine is dead. It's been coughing along for a year now and I pat it and tell it it's being splendid but that darn thing went ahead and just died anyway. Ungrateful wretch of a thing.
I always fed it the best washing powder, in fact tablets thankyouverymuch, tablets so that the machines drawer doesn't get all clogged and horrid. Best fabric softeners, you name it that machine has had it. Not a grain of cheapo shop's own stuff ever been in that Hotpoint.
I have spent the past few days manually turning the dial and respinning it 32 times for every load, it has taken me the entire weekend to do two loads of laundry. I am on the verge of stamping my feet and screaming in as dramatic a way as possible because OH I LOVE CLEAN LAUNDRY!
I love washing and drying and folding laundry, I am a freaky laundry snob who loves white whites and little boys in pristine white school shirts and socks that look as if they have never been worn before.
I love to stand and iron beautiful clean clothes and smell that fresh smell.
I am mourning my washing machine. I wouldn't be if I thought I could get another one but I can't and I'm not at all sure when I can.
The benefits people have screwed up again, not entirely their fault this time, they wrote to me to say the last screw up was all fixed and I read that and threw the latter away without reading it all ( because those letters are so blah blah, I had just spent days sorting that mess up out, who'd have thought they had come up with something else?)
So I didn't read that they want details of Sophie's employment , I didn't read it, so didn't send it and so immediately the benefit was stopped.
On Dec 23rd I took in all the paperwork they needed.
Nothing.
Phone call after phone call and they tell me that those few days over Christmas have put them WEEKS behind, WEEKS I tell you.
So, I am having to find that money out of our every day money until the mess is unmessed and it hurts.
No money for washing machine, and that hurts even more.
Funny isn't it how there is never a backlog or delay when the money is stopped? That money stopper person is on the ball, s/he doesn't take a day off, believe in public holidays, doesn't sleep or eat, probably should get a raise any day now. Or a kick in the moneystopping bum.
Oh washing machine I miss you.
I have done all the tricks I know to revive poor washing machine and they haven't worked. Poor old thing. It has been moved 4 times, unplumbed, replumbed, unplumbed again. It has washed and rinsed and spun and cleaned.
I miss it.
The end.