lifestylesupportguru

Tag: dishwasher

Making The Most Of Retirement

Making The Most Of Every Minute

The Lifestyle Support Guru is a great believer in making the most of every minute of the day, giving daily life true meaning with fun events such as emptying the dishwasher, then filling it up again. As my sainted mother would have said, ‘Just think of all those poor people around the world who don’t have the same opportunities as you. They would be delighted to be able to empty and fill a dishwasher.’ You grumble back, ‘Yeah, well, they can come and do mine any time’, before realising how silly you sound, having a conversation about a dishwasher with your mother when she’s been dead over 16 years! Anyway, I have found something that’s much more fun – putting together an indoor clothes airer!

Deluxe Clothes Airer

The aforementioned clothes airer is, of course, the ‘de luxe’ version – I wouldn’t have anything less in my abode! – and is therefore more complicated in its arrangement, including wheels!
I spent a great deal of time considering the various options available to me – I was bored – and eventually set off in search of the de luxe airer, not knowing whether it would actually be in stock. On the website where I had spotted it, it was suggested that I ring my local store to check availability, which I duly did, only to hear a recorded message saying that, due to the large size of the store, it was not possible to check the availability of individual items! Oh, the excitement, the anticipation that this created! And the joy I felt when, upon rounding a corner in the shop, I spotted the required item in all its glory (well, in a bright orange box, actually). I asked a kindly young assistant to help me get it off the top shelf, which I would like to say she did with a smile and a cheerful greeting, but that would be stretching the imagination too far…

Construction Set?

Now, call me naïve, but I had assumed that the airer would be complete in its box and would simply need unfolding – hey presto, ready to use! – and I had a load of washing all ready to be aired. Oh no, not a bit of it – inside the box was a Meccano set and a page of instructions. It took me AN HOUR AND A HALF to put it together! AN HOUR AND A HALF, just so that I could hang some bloody washing up! Not only that, but it’s six foot high and it doesn’t fold down again, as I had thought – only the airing ‘wings’ fold away, so I now have a six foot de luxe airer with bright orange fixings standing in the middle of my dining room (that’s a loose term for the room where I have a table upon which I consume the occasional Pot Noodle but which is otherwise a reading desk, and sleeping area for the cat) because I have nowhere else to put it. But it does have wheels and it holds a lot of clothes…

Living Life To The Full

Live Life to the Full

Good evening, one and all! As the Lifestyle Support Guru, I like to think that I have a broad range of interests to match the interests of you, my adoring followers. It is with this in mind that I spent last week ‘researching’ a variety of events, all with the purpose of helping us to live in harmony – WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, you know! I have plumbed the depths of sorrow and risen to the dizzy heights of near-hysteria, with just one point in mind: LIVING LIFE TO THE FULL!!!

So, how do you go about this? As always with the LSG, there are just a few simple rules:

1. Go and see a screening of Hamlet with that fabulous actress, Maxine Peake, playing the title

Hamlet actor

role. Whilst you will be AMAZED by the acting, I can guarantee that you will not come away feeling full of the joys of spring – indeed, as one friend (a Sunderland supporter, but I suppose someone has to be, and that may go some way to explaining her state of mind) who accompanied the LSG said: “A grand performance, but you feel like saying, ‘Get a grip, Hamlet.’” I couldn’t have put it better myself!

2. Invite a sibling to stay and ask him to have a look at your (new) dishwasher, which hasn’t drained properly of water, because he knows about these things. (The LSG doesn’t need to concern herself with such mundane subjects because she has siblings to do that for her!) You also ask him to look at your new vacuum cleaner, which has already had to have a replacement part, but you have been unable to take the screw out of the ‘old’ part to replace it with the new part. Of course, he sorts everything because a) you had opened the dishwasher door before the cycle had finished and b) you had been using a ‘cheap’ Phillips screwdriver rather than a ‘proper’ one.

Screwdriver

To the LSG, one screwdriver is much the same as another. However, this is not the case, I was told, and nor is it the case with screws themselves (we are talking ‘proper’ metal screws here; none of this smutty ‘Benny Hill double entendre’ stuff, of course!), as is evidenced by a subsequent conversation that said sibling had with a friend – how can you have a 20-minute chat about the relative properties of Phillips versus flathead screwdrivers on a Saturday afternoon (or at any time, come to that)?

3. Go and see the Lady Boys of Bangkok, who do a tour of the UK every year. Make sure that

dancing octopus

you book a table right at the front, which will ensure that the aforementioned sibling gets his comeuppance for being so practical and good at everything (see 2. above) when he gets dragged up on stage by the lead Lady Boy for a rendition of ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ and the presentation of a giant box of Viagra at the end of the song!
I nearly choked on my glass of Prosecco, dear devotees!

So there you have it – from the Prince of Denmark to Bangkok, there is something for everyone if you just know where to look for it. LIVE LIFE TO THE FULL!!! You know it makes sense.

PS I have the whole Lady Boy song on video – I’m saving that for the future when I may need other practical things doing!

Ingenuity and Inventiveness for life

lost sock

Tuesday evening greetings from the Lifestyle Support Guru!
Inspired by a tale recounted this morning by my good friend Debbie, who rescued a sock from behind a radiator using just a ruler and a chopstick, I felt I had to teach others how to use INGENUITY and INVENTIVENESS in negotiating a path through this forest of dark trees, branches and thorns that we call LIFE! A somewhat long tale, but one which may well stand you in good stead in a similar situation in the future.

1. The first thing required is a poorly dishwasher which has decided to display its unhappiness by blowing up the house (I may have exaggerated a little here).

dishwasher

2. 24 hours later, armed with tea towels and other sundry items that may soak up water, you decide that you will heed the advice of many FB friends and gingerly dare to open the dishwasher, to find that they were right and that you are not immediately engulfed by a tidal wave of biblical proportions flooding from the machine. Buoyed (spot the pun!) by this success, you decide to venture forth and investigate new dishwashers.
3. You only have room for a small, worktop machine, so you look for a tape measure to ensure that you don’t end up purchasing one that will take over your kitchen. Unfortunately, you cannot find said tape measure and realise that it is either a) currently residing in a monkey-

monkey

infested house in Tanzania or b) stashed away somewhere in the spare room, cunningly hidden by a sibling (currently residing in a monkey-infested house in Tanzania) until his return, knowing that you will have little use for it until such time as he reappears.
And this is where the LSG’s CUNNING INGENUITY and INVENTIVENESS come to the fore and you sally forth to a well-known electrical goods emporium, happily armed with AN ALTERNATIVE to the missing tape measure. The ensuing encounter goes something like this:

i) Unusually, you are not immediately surrounded by salespersons and you actually have to search one out and ask if they have any worktop dishwashers because you can only see large ones.
ii) The salesperson sighs irritatedly and leads you towards the sole, cunningly hidden worktop dishwasher in the store (cunningly hidden on top of a box cleverly disguised to look like a worktop).
iii) As is usual with people of advancing age, you explain in great – and unnecessary – detail why you require such a machine and then go on to say that you need to check the dimensions. The salesperson obviously expects you to produce a piece of paper with the dimensions written on it, but, in the style of Paul Daniels, you produce from your pocket three PIECES OF STRING, of differing lengths, and explain that they have been carefully cut to the exact measurements of your dead machine.

string

iv) At this point the salesperson realises that he is dealing with a superior being and rolls his eyes in admiration (which may also be spelt ‘exasperation’), saying, “Well, I’ve seen it all now.”
v) Satisfied that the dimensions will suit, you then examine the inside of the machine and comment that it doesn’t seem to have a great deal of height inside to accommodate large plates.
vi) “Oh,” says the salesperson, “didn’t you bring a dinner plate with you as well?” You are sure that you have imagined the slight note of sarcasm in his voice, so you just smile sweetly and say, “That’s a good idea! I’ll come back tomorrow with one, just to make sure.” And you then sweep majestically out of the store, determined to return the following day with a large (clean) dinner plate with which to prove your point!

And that, my dear friends, is how to use INGENUITY and INVENTIVENESS to make sure that your life runs smoothly (and that you annoy the snotty salesperson at a certain large electrical store!).
Enjoy the rest of your evening!