A trip to London / what's wrong with my washing machine?

What with Phil and Becky out the office, and me scheduled to visit a potential new customer in London, it was looking like it was going to be a busy day for Juan and Hazel, who were left manning the phones.

But how lucky is this? I popped into the office for an hour and a half to tie up a few loose ends and the phones were deader than woolly mammoths and the dead bloke in my garden. Normally it is the other way around - the minute the office has minimal cover, all four phones lines start ringing simulataneously prompting you to shout "everybody panic," and then run around in a random manner clutching the sides of your head. Actually it reminds me of a daft quotation that makes me laugh:

"If you ever set yourself on fire, try to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror, because I bet that's what REALLY throws you into a panic.”

I digress, down to London I went for a meeting at 12pm with David and Annabel in Kensington. Normally, I tend to cut the timings too fine because there is always too much to do in the office, but today, I got the time of the meeting wrong and set off half an hour early by accident. Good job I did, because two lanes of the A40 had been blocked off to ....... get this......... cut the grass on the central reservation. Yep, one of the main arterial routes into London was brought to a choking halt so that the grass could be trimmed. Don't you just love local councils?

I don't want to sound like a 'meeting lover' (trust me, I normally have a sign on my desk saying 'Feeling lonely? have a meeting.'), but the one today was really interesting because it involved some really good business ideas, and it is always fascinating talking to people with a lateral view on things.

It's a shame that my optimism was popped like a balloon in a pin factory once I returned to my car afterwards. I had managed to get myself another parking ticket. The irritating thing was that this one was totally avoidable. When I parked up, I had been worried about being late, so I ran to the Pay and Display machine, threw all my money in, and accidentally put the ticket upside down on my dashboard so that the warden couldn't see that it was valid. What. a. blooming. numpty.

I set off home and as I crawled through the outbound jams caused by........yep you got it....... lanes coned off at the central reservation (you can see it in the picture below, even though this section didn't even have any bloody grass), I spotted one of my favourite examples of Art Deco architecture - the Hoover Building.

'Superb,' I thought, 'I am going to take a picture of that,' and just as I pressed the shutter button, a man in a van drove passed and blocked the view.

I arrived back at home at 4.30pm and decided to try and pretend that I was a domestic goddess by doing some washing. Unfortunately, I failed spectacularly and managed to flood my kitchen. Please, I need help!


Look! The inside is full of water, and it all spilled out onto my floor when I opened the washing machine door..... I am truly feeling like a victim this week.

Is there anyone out there who is a washing machine engineer who just happens to be visiting Oxford this week? Ooooh..... it's a big ask.