In the end, I bit the bullet and bought a new one.
I mean, a new dryer. That hex nut driver arrived the same day—i.e., today—as the new dryer, which, I think, shows the power of karma. Power of sometning. Power of bloody money, if you come right down to it.
Anyway, with the new dryer comoing, it was time to get rid of the old one. Now, dryers are not that heacy. Essentially, they are mostly air. They have to be or they couldn’t blow warm air over your dainties to dry them. So, being slightly filled with air due to breathing and certain other gases due to having sausages for lunch, thought I could easily hoik out the old one to the carport where it could be left until I could scrounge a tip run off someone.
It proved about as light as I thought, but so bloody awkward that by the time I made it from the laundry to the back door, around seven feet (0.01060606… furlongs), my heart was beating like a buggered tumble dryer and I was panting like a buggered tumble dryer and my pulse was racing like a buggered tumble dryer’s would be if dryer theory had taken a different path. Nonetheless, after a few lifts and occasional drops, and a fair bit of swearing, I made it out to the carport, where I dumped the damn thing and, puffing like an old and decrepit fat slob, I walked back into the house.
The delivery was scheduled for between 10:36 and 13:36. They give you a three hour window but can be accurate to the minute for the window edges. They turned up at 12:38, so not too bad. I asked them to just leave the package in the carport and I’d take care of the rest.
So I waved the delivery guys goodbye, explaining theat I didn’t get the ‘take away my old dryer’ option because the Good Guys website said the Ballarat store didn’t offer it. I signed my name on the guy’s phone reader thing, and we parted on good terms.
I lifted the new dryer. It was probably thirty feet (0.0049373613424356332659657807943226927710446798285748141906348130056680908211161069893287163518824513011592924432038866908487653305069682626412908237493663719610540937308677247980619210943825994219995655 nautical miles) from the carport to the laundry. I could do it.
I hear a friendly laugh from behind me. “Now, that is something I never expected to see.” I put the dryer down as delicately as I could and turned. “Darren carrying a washer around.”
There were two of these interlopers. Stephen Brown and Nova de Vandall are two of Ballarat Writers’ best writers. It was the former who had expressed surprise at my Herculean efforts. They had dropped around to do some printing, but Stephen offered to do the heavy lifting. Well, it was light lifting, but he’s half my age, has a far more active lifestyle and rarely indulges in the health-giving properties of flavoured ethanol. After he’d peel away the packaging, I was left with this:
It’s 2-star efficiency, the door is big enough to get a good view of the tumbling clothes, but it’s plastic. It’s a Westinghouse, not a Simpson, but it has a 6.5 kg (32500 carat) capacity. And its nuts are probably ⅔” octagons, but it seems quiet and will probably dry my clothes. I’ll let you know.