Today preparations for our approaching trip to France began in earnest. After a crack of dawn trip to Heathrow to collect a niece returning from Australia for a couple of weeks, Carol began by putting a load of washing in our machine. I set about washing and waxing our caravan, Billy, so that he’d look presentable, at least to begin with, on the foreign camp sites.
After an intermission for a downpour which held off long enough to finish the marathon caravan cleaning, I set about washing and leathering our car. This sparkling cleanliness is likely to last about as far as Dover but one simply must make an effort not to let the side down.
Our neighbours, Paul and Liz, had kindly invited us round to christen their paella pan and paella ring recently hand-imported from Spain. That meant that we had plenty of time for our cleaning chores since we had no food preparations of our own to worry about. Just before going round to start the evening’s socializing, I wondered where my mobile phone was; it desperately needed charging. I’d had it in my pocket for Carol’s dawn patrol to Heathrow. Now where was it? Ah, I’d changed into my scruffy trousers for the grubby tasks of caravan and car washing. Carol had grabbed my discarded trousers to launder them ready for France. Gulp!
I can now report that, according to practical experimentation, a Nokia 2630 tends not to survive a washing machine cycle at 30°C, not even using Persil colour Small and Mighty. It actually looks grubbier than when it went in. I wonder if it would have fared better with the modern ranges of washing products that claim to be able to clean things “from as low as 15°C”? . It might be interesting to see whether it was the immersion in water, the tumbling in a stainless steel drum or the temperature of the cycle that proved terminal. Maybe I should buy a replacement and try.
The SIM card seems to be OK since it appears to work in Carol’s mobile phone. SIM cards must be made of sterner stuff.
Serves me right for buying a lightweight mobile phone that is actually portable, I suppose. When I had a mobile house brick, I’d never have inadvertently left it in a cargo pocket ‘cos I’d have heard it hit the floor changing my trousers.
That’s what you get for buying a mobile phone in the first place. It is much harder to wash a land line phone.