Christmas breakdowns......stuf f

Washing machine is on the blink due to switch gone. Glass fitting in ceiling in utility room decided to come crashing down last night. Gas man just got here in time to see to boiler, which was coming on at all the wrong times. Other then that, ok so far, but anything could happen today with family coming over for lunch and tea.

I remember one Christmas Eve when we lived in the back of beyond and the electricity went off in the village (geese flying into overhead cables we were told!) and it was off for 23 hours.

No lights, no heating, no hot water, no oven.

A nightmare.

What a timely discussion. Yesterday morning, hoovering before guests arrived, the vacuum cleaner gave a sudden cough, then a strangled cry, then smoked and died. We couldn't get it started again. Nothing was caught, so I'm hoping it only needs a good clean. (Knock on wood!)

Cooker element packed up this year and the water went off Christmas Day morning!
Thank you Thames Water for working flat out to save Christmas for South West London before lunch time

We lost ours (fan asst + regular double-oven) a couple of Christmases ago. Luckily my stepson who lives opposite our back garden has the same kind/size, so all was saved!

If you have an electric one (mid-priced model), be careful how you clean it.

DO NOT SPRAY THE OVEN LIGHT COVER WITH ANY KIND OF CLEANER... it gets in around the edges and shorts out the electrics in the oven. So no heat, no fan, nothing, dead as a doornail! The call-out to fix was almost as expensive as replacing the oven (which we did a couple of years later).

Boiler packed up the day before Christmas Eve. Managed to get an engineer to fix it thank goodness.

Well at least you can replace stuff in the sales, which start now almost before the Christmas calamity happens. Not much comfort though.

Last week, the week before Christmas, we had to have a repairer out for both the dishwasher and to fix a leak under the kitchen sink. Brilliant timing! Also, the dishwasherman insisted on doing four electrical checks where he over loaded the system and destroyed the tiny brain in the BT phone and knocked the BT box out so we had to replace them. Doh!

However, compared with the awful scenes in Aleppo we consider it small fry and that, actually, we are blessed.

On Christmas Eve and busy preparing for guests (18!) for the next two days, my Maximix jammed and became unusable.

Our previous model worked perfectly for 15 or so years and this one (five years old) was really an affectation - just to match out new shiny granite worktops. Perhaps the longevity of appliances has reduced in those years?

I knew I should have kept the old one 'just in case'. That'll teach me!

Central heating and boiler packed in on 23rd,engineer ordered parts and back on 24th,parts replaced,all fine,till 2pm,packed in again !!!,Engineer back in 9am Christmas Day,(kudos for coming out then),new control board needed so no heating or hot water for Christmas Day and I am hosting dinner for Daughter and 3 kids and a friend,portable heater on and plenty kettle boiling to get hot water,first thing on Boxing Day the engineer arrived with new control board and hooray heating and hot water ??,Well done to the engineer ,great service from Scottish Gas ?

Yep, power shower gave up Christmas Eve.

Did anyone else find their oven temp dropped just after mid day on Christmas Day?

My oven door dropped off midway through cooking Christmas lunch. The handle on my small chest freezer snapped in half and I had to lever the lid open with a palette knife. The fluorescent light in my kitchen blew its starter - got a new one 10 mins before Wilkos closed on Christmas Eve! One more, my television aerial attached to my the tallest chimney slide down to roof level in the high winds, so that was the only snow storm seen at Christmas was on the TV screen.

I've now discovered why my oven temp dropped at mid day. It was because one of the pieces of foil I'd used to line the bottom of the oven had floated upwards and was clinging to the fan at the back of the oven. You gotta larf really, me, Mr me, other family members, all equally puzzled at the length of time it was taking to crisp up the roasties.

The only failure in our household over Christmas was the software, very software!

I meant to turn the turkey on before we went to church on Christmas morning and I completely forgot. I remembered halfway through he service, but as we were 3 miles from home there was nothing I could do. In the end we just had to miss coffee and mince pies after the service and rush home and turn it on an hour and a half late. By judicious temperature raising I recovered 30 minutes of the lost time and we had a bigger breakfast to see us through.

My Magimix problem is nothing compared to some stories here!

I hope that everyone is warm with working central heating, full with co-operating ovens and can see what they're doing with lovely electricity.

As has been said, we have wonderful lives compared to many, despite modern-day problems.