Twll-Ddu 16

A book-length novelette of science gone mad! In the great tradition of Andrew Stephenson's NIGHTWASH and Ward Moore's CLEANER THAN YOU THINK!!!

THE STORY SO FAR: Joseph M. Nicholas ekes out a simple middle-class existence at 2 Wilmot Way, Camberley, Surrey GU15 1JA -- until one day his parents leave him alone in the house! NOW READ ON ...

They went rushing off to the Ideal Home Exhibition on that fateful Saturday morning, leaving me with fairly explicit instructions about what to do with the laundry when the washing machine had finished its cycle -- "Take it out and put it in the tumble-dryer," allied to sundry additional exhortations to switch the tumble-dryer on -- and a breakfast consisting mainly of soggy cornflakes and burnt toast. The boiled egg 1 somehow contrived to drop on the floor, which must surely have presaged the disaster to come.... Anyway, I was sitting there eating breakfast (actually eating it, mind you, not analyzing its structure or violating it with my tongue or any of that other expensive rubbish) when there was a loud metallic crashing noise as of several dozen tin trays being flung down the stairs (which for a few seconds I thought might be the attic finally giving way beneath the weight of all my books) and then, sweeping inexorably across the kitchen floor towards me came a miniature tsunami of dirty, greyish water, bearing upon its froth-flecked wavefront a swiftly growing flotsam of dust, and crumbs. Yes indeedy, boss: The Curse Of The Exploding Washing Machine had struck deep into the very heart of 2 Wilmot Way and I, mechanical ignoramus that I am, had been chosen as the one to suffer it.

But then clearing up the water was fairly easy; I took a squeeze-mop in one hand and a plastic bucket in the other and got sploshing. At least, it was easy in some parts, because there were certain other, inaccessible parts of the kitchen into which the tsunami had flowed -- under the freezer, for example, which required much straining of little-used muscles to move and made my arms feel some two or three feet longer by the time I got it back into its rightful position. And under the washing machine and the tumble-dryer, the plumbing of which made it almost impossible for them to be moved very far and which thus required me to put myself through a variety if interesting contortions the like of which I had never before attempted and which I have no burning desire to ever attempt again. (The Hunchback of Camberley, eh wot?) And in the floor-mounted cupboard in the extension, which has no sill to its doors and which was jammed with large packets of detergent ... by the time I got around to cleaning out this particular spot, the physical exertion to which the discerning amongst you will have noticed I am not at all accustomed had so befuddled my brain that I simply lifted out the aforementioned packets without bothering to ascertain their structural integrity beforehand, thus discovering too late that their waterlogged bottoms had stayed behind and that large gobbets of equally waterlogged detergent were even then crashing to the newly (and laboriously) cleaned floor with a speed and a frequency that defied comprehension. (Well, it certainly defied mine, anyway. It's all this alcoholic fannish dissipation, I guess.)

Having recleaned the floor, then, it was time to try emptying the washing machine of its still-sodden load -- except that it's one of those funny foreign devices in which its safety-conscious manufacturers have incorporated an intricate locking mechanism to ensure that the door stays firmly closed until the cycle is completed. (I suppose this is referred to as "child-proofing" it, although any child who can figure out how to open the door of our washing machine must be a bloody genius.) And the cycle was anything but completed ... so into the back I had to go with the instruction manual in one hand, a screwdriver in the other and a torch between my teeth. At least, that was the theory; you'll remember that it couldn't be pulled out very far ... so if I went in feet first I found that I couldn't qet my head down far enough to see what I was doing, and if 1 went in head first I was left waving my legs in the air and uttering muffled bleats for assistance that nobody could even hear. (Although the dog heard them well enough, however; and all he did in return was bark -- perhaps in sympathy with my plight, and perhaps because he thought I was a cat. Or a mouse. Or something else vaguely edible, like a goldfish.)

But I eventually got the door open. Somehow. About mid-afternoon, I think it was. And finished the washing by hand. And even remembered to put it in the tumble-dryer. And then went away to lie down and recover, dozing off to dream fitfully of giant sentient washing machines lurching apocalyptically across the blasted urban landscape of Camberley ... in a thousand kitchens, housewives recoiled in horror as their tumble-dryers tore themselves loose from their plumbing and rotated off to join their brethren in an orgy of rampage and flooding ... sodden detergent spilling from the sky to maim and crush hapless would-be sf authors of little repute and less talent ... and above it all reared the spectre of J.G. Ballard, intoning "I knew that motorway symbology was played out!" in a voice of inescapable woe....

Eventually, of course, my parents duly returned from the Ideal Home Exhibition, laden down with all manner of interesting catalogues. One of them was for (of all the goddamn things) washing machines.

And Joseph goes on to suggest that he should receive a starring role on the cover. There you are, Joe: your every wish has been granted.