The washing machine's revenge.

I don't think I managed to give a full picture of quite how wet things got yesterday. Water was sheeting everywhere; I thought Little Fish had been safe but it was dripping out of her (thankfully manual) wheelchair when we got to the clinic. Water was sheeting in graceful torrents up the walls and dripping down from the ceiling. At one point I am sure I saw dolphins doing backflips over the kitchen counters! No rainbow, but thankfully no fried electrical circuits either so I'm not complaining.

After the floods, the clear up. I used the remainder of the laundry mountain to sop up the worst of the puddles, together with the bed pads mentioned yesterday. Then had to leave to do the rest of our day's doings. Somehow, the laundry mountain (what do you call a sodden mountain? A slurry heap?) was not a priority for the rest of the day.

When it came to bathtime, I ran the water for a while, only to watch the water become a trickle, a splutter, a hiccup, and a nothing. Cold water running fine, hot water non-existent. Hmmm. Back to the airing cupboard to inspect the various taps. Stop cock immobile, can't be that. Hot water tank empty, cold water flowing freely. Now why? I trace the pipes back, and realise that the tap I had thought was the mains for both flats was in fact the tap for the hot water. Which for some reason had been half on, half off, when I came to turn it off in the morning. Only, it appears I turned it fully on, rather than off, and then in turning it back on later, I turned it fully off. Marvel at my competence with basic concepts, on and off, left and right, clockwise and anticlockwise. Tap back on, fill the bath with a kettle, normal processing has been resumed.

This morning I gathered the slurry heap and stuffed it into the washing machine. I put the machine on a quick cycle first, thinking to extract anything left disgusting and add it to a proper wash later. Imagine my delight as, two minutes into the cycle, with a bipbopbipbopbipbop the washing machine gleefully announced an inlet error once more. I cleaned out the soap dish, which was absolutely disgusting, full of stagnant water and mould, and quite possibly the source of the original error rather than the filters, which had been fairly clean. Restart the load. Two minutes in, bipbopbipbopbipbop. I am sure the machine is laughing at me by this point. It is at this moment I notice those two little taps on the pipes. The ones I found yesterday after having flooded the kitchen. The ones I switched off to clean the filters. The ones which are indeed still switched off. Flip them back on again and hey presto! water floods into the washing machine and we are off.

I am the conqueror; washing machine maintenance holds no further terrors for me.

And then I discover the toilet has blocked. Washing machine's final act of revenge?
Tia