Machines have feelings too

If you think your home appliances have no feelings and are simply inanimate lumps of plastic and paint with a few wires and bits of metal, think again. They seem to want attention and get jealous, with dire consequences, if too much court is paid to one over another.

Let me start at the beginning, always a good place to start if a little unimaginative. For reasons best known to my wife, redecoration time was declared last Friday. With her usual approach to turning thought into action the decorators arrived on Monday morning, paint, thinners, brushes and masking tape having spent the weekend arriving like eager guests at a party.

The first rebellion was from our central air conditioning system, which began to make groaning and creaking noises sounding just like it was in real pain and of such magnitude our next door neighbour beseeched us to turn it off before disaster struck. As if in sympathy the plan “B” AC began blowing out warm air only. Service men arrived and performed the machine equivalent of major surgery on the main one “cash, please”, but only the last rights were possible on our so called Little AC – replacement required.

Then it was the turn of our faithful old gas hob; imported from a refurbished flat in England, it had never really been able to digest the local propane gas properly, in spite of replacement nozzles, burners, connections and such like. One of its burners finally went out, so another set of men arrived to fit a new one. Bigger and better it may be, but many a good meal has come from that old hob, now gone for a third life in the home of Mohamed the decorator.

Our fridge freezer clearly mourned the loss its friend across the way and wanted attention, so the fridge stopped cooling and the freezer iced up. Another service man, another part replaced and another bill paid “cash, please”: attention duly delivered.

As an aside, services here are extremely responsive. The cooker hob and air conditioning unit were delivered and installed the day after purchase, the decorator came to give a quote and then started immediately after negotiations were completed, “cash, please”; the fridge repair man was at the door fifteen minutes after the mayday call. But (oh, yes, there’s always a “but”) they tend only to bring their hands with them – “do you have a hammer/screwdriver/pair of pliers/junction box/drill bits/dust sheets”  – all those have been asked of us in the last week. Since DIY stores are difficult to come by, I am amazed to be able to say the answer was, in all cases, “yes”.

Was that it then? Oh, dear me, no! I don’t really think of us as technology freaks: OK, we have a couple of laptops, a PC, an iPad, a couple of iPhones, streaming video and music piped around the house from iTunes, but that’s about par for the course these days isn’t it? The whole thing relies on the internet and, given the vagaries of the electricity supply, the clever bits of electronics that whizz bits and bytes into, out of and all around our flat are protected by a black box which smooths out all the electrical lumps and bumps as Electricity du Liban (EDL), the generator on the balcony and our local bakery dance around one another taking turns to supply us. The black box is known as an Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS for short. The UPS resented being moved from of its hideaway in order to give the decorators free access to the wall behind it, and became an UIPS – an Unreliable and Interruptible Power Supply. Off to the menders for twenty-four hours, “cash, please”.

Perhaps foolishly we exposed our modem and routers to the power sources directly. “It’s only for a day”, we told ourselves, “it should be all right”. It wasn’t. They did what we all do when our proper sustenance is suddenly cut off, they got all grumpy and sulked. They just refused to pass on the bits and bytes to their usual proper places. We spent an hour while resetting and reloading was going on, in the waiting room of our internet service provider, which was rather like being in a dentist’s waiting room but with fewer comforts and more anxiety. Going in person was the only way to get them to help with the mix of boxes we’ve wired together over the years.

The series of hiccoughs and failures listed above looks unbelievable, but they all did happen in the last week, like some collective mechanical epidemic. The only machine that carried on working happily all through was the bank’s cash dispenser across the road, presumably delighted with the increased attention it has been getting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go out, let’s hope the car hasn’t noticed …….