Section 75 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 November 11 Thursday.
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In Japan, cleanliness ranks well above godliness. It's possible to imagine someone drifting through life without worrying much about their religious duties, but to get through a week without rigorously cleaning something is pretty much impossible. Consequently, it's hardly surprising that my failure to clean beneath the washing machine led to me falling victim to supradivine vengeance.

My lapse came on Saturday. In this household, by agreement, the big traditional Japanese New Year's clean up (clean everything, and clean it well!) gets done in November. (The last thing I want to do during the New Year break is get down on my hands and knees and scrub floors.)

Saturday was a beautifully sunny autumn day, pretty much windless, with a cosy haze of gray photochemical smog truncating the view to the horizon. And all day we cleaned. But, when it came to cleaning in the laundry, I looked at the washing machine and thought, no, it's too heavy.

If I hadn't been lazy, if I'd moved the washing machine and cleaned under it, I would possibly have spotted the problem before the disaster happened. But I didn't.

This morning, I threw a load of laundry into the machine then went upstairs to do ironing, only to be interrupted by a cry of horror:

"Hugh! Hugh!"

My name tends to be invoked in this manner only when creepy crawlies put in an appearance (ants, cockroaches or geckos.) So I went downstairs, heroically prepared to do battle, only to find that the washing machine had flooded, and water was spilling out of the laundry onto the waxed floorboards of the (very short) hall, and from there down into the miniscule foyer.

The outlet hose from the washing machine, which plugs into a socket in the laundry floor, had pulled free.

After a lot of work with towels, I had everything pretty much under control. But there was still water under the washing machine. The machine, at that time, was still going (the hose having been pushed back into its socket.)

In retrospect, my next step should have been to unplug the washing machine. (Switching it off at the wall was not an option because, in Japan, there are no wall switches. Plugs just slide into electrical outlets and these outlets are always live.)

However, I proceeded to make one of the worst mistakes of my life, an idiot error which could quite possibly have gotten me killed. While the washing machine was still going, I threaded a towel beneath it and started to work the towel backwards and forwards, removing the water.

The unpardonable thing was that I've been taught the basic safety rule: if you're going to mess around with anything which uses electricity, then switch it off and disconnect it from any power source. Particularly if it's wet!

Actually, if the washing machine had been installed as designed, it would have been impossible to get a towel under it, because a metal skirt is designed to come right down to the floor level. However, we had hoisted the machine up on little shock absorbers to cut the noise and to keep the flooring from getting dented by the four little feet that the machine is designed to sit on.

Well ... I got away with the cleaning, at first. At least I didn't electrocute myself. Then I pushed the towel under one last time ... and something grabbed it. And pulled it further under.

I pulled back. The machine refused to surrender the trophy it had seized. Whoops! Suddenly we're into the wonderful world of do-it-yourself washing machine repairs!

I unplugged the machine (my brain kicked into gear at this point), took out the sodden laundry, bailed out the machine then turned it over on its side, resulting in another flood of water from the bowels of the beast. I cleaned up the new flood then went to work on the towel, which had got itself caught around two wheels which were joined by a fan belt.

(I think I should have known that there were moving parts under the washing machine.)

At first, the towel refused to come free. By gently pulling on it, I managed to produce ... an ominous sound of tearing fibers ... is this going to work? What are my options? I could cut it away with a knife, I suppose ... pull a little more ... bingo!

The towel came free ... fortunately this whole procedure was unobserved, as I had been left to deal with the flood by myself ... there are now, however, conspicuous oil stains on the towel, which may be a bit difficult to explain. But it's an old towel ... maybe it could just quietly disappear?

So that was today's big IQ failure. The upside is that the laundry floor is spotlessly clean and, additionally, I have a fresh stock of plot ideas:-

Man props up washing machine on concrete blocks for easy daily maintenance. Cat (or small child) crawls underneath, into the maelstrom of the moving parts. Man sues washing machine company for making a washing machine so light that it is dangerously easy to lift it up to slide blocks or similar underneath. In consequence of the lawsuit, all washing machines made thereafter are ballasted with a hundred kilos of depleted uranium ....

Couple who have moved into old house move washing machine, discover a couple of curious items which look oddly like knucklebones. Realize that the floorboards under the washing machine are loose ....

Extremely well-educated individual with stellar IQ makes an idiot mistake with electricity, kills himself out of sheer stupidity and is sentenced to a million years in Purgatory as punishment ....

(Actually, now I think of it, wasn't there a famous Western religious mystic who got himself killed by his electrical fan in Bangkok? The fan wasn't working properly so he tried his hand at the "let's see if I can fix this electrical gadget" business.)