“Three out of four fixes at home this summer”, it said in an ad from Clas Ohlson. I’m not much of a home fixer but I have to fix a new washing machine. When I use the old one, it sounds like the Einstürzende Neubauten sound checks and the centrifuge is broken.
Appliances are among the most boring things you can buy. It’s not shopping. It does not even feel like consumption. Of course, I am grateful that as a privileged westerner I can buy a washing machine – and avoid washing my ribbon sweaters in a polluted river filled with crocodiles – but when I pay SEK 6,495 for a new model, SEK 695 to have it delivered and SEK 299 for to get the old one removed, I think it would be more fun to spend that money on vinyl and wash in the sink.
The most boring buying a new washing machine does not show up until it’s time to unpack the old one. The previous owner of my apartment thought that it was a good idea to first install a washing machine in a corner and then build a chest of drawers with a sink that blocks it. To change the washing machine, you must lift the sheet metal colossus one meter straight up – or tear the dresser. An experienced home fixer had already noted this at the apartment viewing. But as I said, I’m not an experienced home fixer. I know so little about bathrooms that I once thought that a plumber was referring to the joke magazine from KTH when he talked about the mixer.
My first impulse in this type of situation is to call Byggare-Bo, as I usually call my father. Since I moved away from home 30 years ago, he has fixed an infinite number of things with me. Lately I have told myself that it is not for mine but for his sake that I ask for help. It is important to feel needed as a pensioner. But on Tuesday, Byggare-Bo reached the respectable age of 82. It would be deeply unfortunate if, after escaping covid-19, he was mashed by an Electrolux EW2F3047R5.
Instead, I ask my friend Pinot Noir-Per, who got his name from the fact that he knows everything about wine but has also been an officer. An awkward sandwich pair from Electrolux should not be a match for Pinot Noir-Per, who survived the war in Kosovo in the nineties. “No problem”, he says and takes a firm grip on the front of the washing machine while I try to slide down into the minimal space between the back and the wall. My right leg gets stuck halfway and when I splash with my left leg to get loose, I kick the shelf under the mirror. A bottle of bath salt is rolled out and sprinkled all over the bathroom. In the end, I still get a grip on the washing machine, but one of my hands is scratched against a sharp edge and begins to bleed while we lift.
“You turned off your ballofix, didn’t you?” asks my girlfriend.
“Sorry, but I do not have time to joke now”, I answer while the muscles ache and the bath salt stings in the wound.
“You have to turn off your ballofix!” she shouts.
I do not understand anything. Ballofix sounds like one of Asterix’s brave bars. Or as a dangerous drug (“Kattis had been clean for six months but one night she took a ballofix, she was completely blue when they found her in a discount outside SÖS”). Before I have time to think more about what needs to be ballofixed, a hose detaches from the washing machine and blasts the bathroom in ice-cold water. Pinot Noir-Per, who has been trained to remain calm in crisis situations, carefully shuts down the washing machine and shuts off the small valve down by the floor.
Afterwards I am shocked. “Come on, that thing can not be called that,” I say. “You came up with that name to push me.”
My girlfriend is a property manager and an ace in plumbing. I trust her but for safety’s call Byggare-Bo who is disappointed. “My son,” he says. “How could you forget the ballofix?”
Read more chronicles and other texts by Fredrik Strage. For example, about how kissologists get their kicks.