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Golden Voices - 22 February 2008

Josie Loftus
22/ 2/2008

A COUPLE of days ago, I realised after yet another appliance went wrong that I was being hit by one of those episodes when everything that could possibly go wrong, did so to such extremes I eventually gave up the battle to stay sane and logical and just accept that, it, whatever it was, would eventually pass and everything would hopefully settle down back to normality.

Now why couldn’t I do just, ‘that’ whatever ‘that’ is but no I couldn’t because my overactive thought processes go off on a tangent all of their own almost as though they don’t belong to me and start to rationalise about what is happening and worse still, why?

I mean, why should the electric kettle I’ve been using daily for the past three years, suddenly stop switching itself off once it has started to boil?

I can’t tell you how many times my attention has been caught by the sound of it over boiling itself and filling my kitchen up with its steam.

So I had to stand before it waiting patiently for it to start singing to boiling point when I would turn it off manually … until … yesterday when for no reason it decided to act normally by doing the job it was designed to do and switch itself off at the appropriate time.

So now I’m again wondering why? Oh! lets move on eh!

Whilst this was happening with the kettle, my computer started to indicate that it was about to play the silly little tricks they spring up on you when you least expect it like, they decide to ask you for your password. Password? … why? … Why does it now suddenly need a password when its been quite happy and content up to now to do its job without having needed a password before.

Experience has taught me to turn everything off and pull all the plugs out, leave well alone for about ten minutes, go back, switch and plug everything back on and in and hey presto! … nope, it didn’t work this time. It still wants a password.

By now I’m frazzled and I decide to make myself a cup of tea.

Yes folks, whilst I stood waiting impatiently for it to boil and wonder what else could possibly go wrong the cuckoo in my cuckoo clock and I’m being serious, I’m not joking; sprung out of its little doors and sort of paused which made me look up at it and then instead of cuckoo-ing it opened its mouth and started to chirrup out a tune I’d never heard before as though its been doing it all its life!

Then, when it had stopped its little performance, it sort of did a little nod and popped back into its box leaving me absolutely flabbergasted.

I was that astounded that I really couldn’t believe whether it had actually happened or not. But it had, I know it had, with my hand on my heart I know it did actually happen.

Nevertheless, I waited expectantly for the hands of the clock to go round until the little blighter was due to appear again and be witness to whatever it might decide to do next.

As the seconds ticked by, I heard the usual stirrings of the mechanism begin to wind and then the little doors opened, out jumped the little cuckoo and for a minute I swear it sort of looked at me as though it was deciding on the spot what to do then it opened its mouth and cuckoo’d as though it had never done the other thing in the first place.

‘Er … just keep taking the tablets’ was all my son said about it when he and his lovely family came to visit a few hours later. Well at least the kids believed me but this worried my son no end when he noticed the kids were watching the clock and waiting for the magic hour to arrive for the grand performance to happen.

When it didn’t; they sort of looked exactly like their dad as they smiled and asked me for the remote for the telly.

‘What’s wrong with this’ they asked as the screen lit up but would not respond to the remote. We tried new batteries, checked the wiring, the plugs, the aerial and even the accessories to the television. Ziltch, nothing. Two hours after my visitors had left, I was still trying to get some response from the box which was live but brainless.

Eventually I had to resort to contacting the manufacturers helpline who, after a third degree question and answer session concluded that the programme providers sometimes change the frequencies and because of this my television needs tuning in.

I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the way in which some knob tuner has decided to change certain frequencies without telling anyone about it and as a result my television was useless and I had no idea why.

If I had not thought about contacting the manufacturers help line I would more than likely been forced to fork out and buy a new (tuned up) television and unknowingly dumped a perfectly good one.

Then, the next morning just when I thought my episodes of mishaps might be over with, I accidentally squirted washing-up liquid into a home made delicious pan of chicken and lentil soup instead of into the washing-up bowl I’d just filled with hot water.

‘Oh! stop the world, I want to get off’ I said to a friend on the ‘phone as I was telling her about everything that has been going haywire. ‘Why are you so surprised, mercury is retrograde’ … and then my ‘phone went dead.