Job Description

Domestic Dishwasher Operative (DDO)

The holder of this post will

• empty the dishwasher within 15 minutes ( quarter of an hour) of being asked
• put all dishes, plates, pots and pans away in their correct places
• empty the cutlery basket, placing the cutlery in appropriate containers – not randomly in any open drawer
• use common sense to find suitable alternative venues: stacked-on-the-worktops is not an acceptable place
•  re-fill the dishwasher with the mountain of dirty crockery/cutlery  left on the side because the dishwasher wasn’t emptied
• will perform this task without recourse to moaning, grumbling or go-slow tactics (except in a light-hearted manner intended to cause amusement whilst getting on with it)

The employers of said D.D.O. (hereby known as The Parents) undertake to:

• allow the D.D.O. to live
• provide heating, lighting, accommodation,  a share of the household food & drink and other sundries to the D.D.O.

  Sunday morning- aah, the long lovely lie-in. Spuggies tweeting in the hedges,  sea whispering through the shingle and all’s right with the world.
But not this Sunday.
Splatter, whoosh and burble – what’s that about? I jump out of bed and make my undignified dressing-gown clad way to the cubby hole in the eaves. Which is gurgling. Like a geyser before it’s about to blow.
I yank the door off its magnetic catches, drop it on my foot and swear. A lot.
The clear plastic box which houses the water-softener is swirling with water like the Corryvreckan Whirlpool. And there’s cascade in the roof. As in the Chatsworth Cascade.
Best beloved shows up. He finds the correct tap to switch off. I, of course, had twiddled every one but.
Splat, splat, splat sounds come from down below.
I venture downstairs.
No electricity and an indoor water feature in the laundry that I hadn’t planned.
Water bounces off the lid of the chest freezer and joins the padddling pool that was my kitchen floor. I get the mop.
Best beloved fetches the Pond Vac. It’s noisy and needs power so he has to have it. He drags a cable from the garage to the relative dryness of the hall. I carry on mopping and tipping.
He switches the machine on. It gives a few asthmatic sucks and stops. He tries in deeper waters – perhaps it doesn’t like the shallows. On itgoes again – its sounds like Shrek with a straw and a particularly unpleasant milkshake. It manages one mopload and gives up. I carry on mopping. Note self – cheap mops break your back.
We use every towel in the house: dog grade, posh guest, bath sheets and teatowels printed with Playgroup self portraits. They drip in the glorified carport causing a further inundation. It is, of course, drizzly, threatening with rain outside.
I even get the sump emptied that is the bottom of the airing cupboard.
Time for a cuppa.
Ah. No power.
But wait – the extension cable from the garage.!

We jury-rig something from a Health and Safety executive’s worst nightmare. Milk. Fridge off. And both freezers. More adaptors, extension cables and trip hazards. Phut. A trip switch has, well, tripped. Regroup. Forget trying to reset the clocks – let’em flash, I say.
At last a cup of char. Well, it could have been worse, we agree.
At least we didn’t go to Yorkshire for the weekend.