Surprising title I know. I’m sure by now you might have noticed that I consider myself a strong independent woman, but even I know my limitations; and moving a 90kg washing machine is that limit. I know that there are plenty of women who would absolutely be capable of this, but for a 55kg woman who thinks that ‘missing leg day’ sounds like a party game for Jeffrey Dahmer and believes that the gene for biceps might have missed her altogether, I am not that woman.
Until I moved to the middle of nowhere I hadn’t really considered that in this modern world it is pretty difficult to get much done without a washing machine. I’m sure all mums (and dads) and homemakers will attest to this. You would think that after working on yachts for 16 years where the laundry is literally the nucleus of the boat I would know this by now. Without it operating, all work stalls: no uniform (can’t work) , no galley rags (can’t cook), no cleaning cloths (can’t clean), no sheets (can’t sleep), no towels (can’t shower) – it is essential to the successful running of any yacht so of course It makes sense that it is the same at home. Without a washing machine, I couldn’t get started on any cleaning of the house and my dirty clothes were fast piling up ominously in the corner. Thankfully the one thing about moving to the middle of nowhere is that the deer and foxes don’t seem to care how you look (or smell).
When Jack and I drove over in December 2023, it wasn’t just his Uhaul driving experience that was needed, it was his Uhaul lifting and loading experience that I urgently required. The priority of our 5 day stay, before we whizzed off to spend Christmas with our sister in Sweden, was to install a washing machine. If you haven’t experienced your 30s yet this might not seem up high on your priority list, but don’t worry, you have ‘what washing machine brand do you have’ discussions sandwiched between mortgage and insurance debates with friends to look forward to. On the unlikely off hand chance that there are any Gen Z reading this, I suppose they will be able to relate to priority number 2 better – and that was setting up the internet in this rural off the grid location.
But as many of us learnt in secondary school English class ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…’ and it turned out that once we had arrived, priorities 1 & 2 got pushed way down the list as the urgent priority number 1 was now – Get the van back out of the driveway.
We had arrived in the dark, and I had failed to inform my brother about the steepness and angle of my driveway before he had driven down it and pulled up in front of the house. The next morning, in the daylight, I found him frowning at the icy slope as he turned to me and said ‘you could have told me that you lived at the bottom of Everest before I drove down here!’.
I hadn’t really stopped to consider the gradient of my driveway, having only ever revved up it in first gear in a hired Fiat 500, which, despite causing flocks of birds to take flight in fear, hadn’t really been an issue. Now however, looking between the 7m long rear wheel drive Sprinter van and the frosty incline, I could see that we were in a bit of trouble.
But ever the optimist, I was convinced that if anyone could get us out, it was my lorry driving brother, who had been operating forklifts and cars (without our parents knowledge) since the age of 13.
But after many nail biting, and spark inducing attempts, my optimism did start to waver and instead I turned to my yacht survival skills and began to ration up our food in my head.
We had thankfully stopped at the supermarket the night before and stocked up on some essentials, but this would only get us through the day and to about lunch tomorrow; after that we would have to turn our hand to the woods and I would have to give up 6 years of vegetarianism (are you surprised it took me this long to mention it?) and hunt a deer or boar.
“Didn’t you say there was a pizzeria in the village?” – Jack chimed in, bursting my Swiss Family Robinson downward mental spiral.
I mountaineered my way to the top driveway and halfway up the dirt lane to get a bar of signal to check the opening times on the internet and then a little bit higher to get another bar of signal so that I could call to double check the opening times on the internet were accurate. Thank the pizza gods – it was open! We weren’t going to starve.
Jack continued to attempt to get out of the driveway for 2 days; he put on snow chains on different tires, he did different run ups, he put rocks in the back of the van, at one point he even had me sit in the driver’s seat with my foot on the break halfway up the drive while he carefully assessed the situation. Finally he made it. There was no way I would have been able to do that on my own. And, while I think the gender stereotypes have a lot to answer for, they for sure allowed for my brother to learn many skills to fix a situation that I would have been at a complete loss at on my own.
Now, we were free to go washing machine shopping.
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