today is mrs hardly’s washing day (as is every saturday). the h00vermatic decided to make a horrible knocking sound when spinning & to emit the delicious aroma of burning rubber.

being the handy creature that i am, i removed the back to check what was going on. after a while i noticed that one of the fan belts was stripping itself – eeeek. who knew that fanbelts were not entirely made of rubber, but had some sort of fabric-thing happening? so naturally i removed what i could of the stripped parts with a stanley knife.

this cunning strategy worked for about 2 loads – now it is beginning to make the ghastly noise again – ack! could this be the end of the h00vermatic de luxe? where the heck am i going to find a replacement fan belt? a fan belt of the *correct* size? if we did not have such specific needs, i would just run out and buy a new sparkly one – alas the size of the hardly haus, the need for wheels on the machine & our lack of proper washing machine taps dictates that we need a 40+ year old twin tub. as much as i would love to spend my day in the laundromat, i really think the cost is a *little* prohibitive. i have at least 12 loads of washing to do & frankly i would rather spend that sort of cash on something tangible!