Shelley-Anne Salisbury's guilt over a broken dishwasher

The plangent strains to keep going were all too evident, despite my best efforts to ignore them. I willed it to just make it through just a few more cycles as we had guests coming over the weekend. This was clearly the last straw for my dishwasher.

I made panic calls to local repair services. I was oh so polite, proffered pleasantries, cajoled and basically just ended up full on begging to get it fixed before the weekend. It wasn’t pretty. But the computer said no, it would have to wait until the following week.

Really? Couldn’t one of the nice engineers just, you know, pop by if they were already making repairs in the area? That’s not how it works, apparently.

Upon hearing my rising hysteria one repair engineer told me to chill, it was only a dishwasher. Only a dishwasher - what madness was this?

Explaining my impending houseful of guests, he suggested they could all join in with the washing up. Could be fun, no? Err, no. I hung up. While it was a deliciously passive aggressive move on my part, it didn’t solve the issue.

Of course, a broken dishwasher is a first-world, spoilt middle-class problem, and in the global arena, it isn’t classed as an emergency.

I thought about how people struggling in underdeveloped and war-torn countries have to walk for hours to collect meagre water rations to drink, let alone do the washing up. But, I’m ashamed to admit, that didn’t give me as much solace as I’d hoped.

Shelley-Anne Salisbury was dreading having to wash dishes by hand (Image: 1000words.co.za) I just pictured the vast amounts of time-consuming washing and drying that lay ahead of me. I already have too few hours in the day to get through work and everything else I need to do. It made me realise just how reliant we’ve become on mod cons.

We (husband, three daughters and the dog) have resorted to using disposable plates and cutlery (well, not the dog obviously) and are now feeling guilty about contributing further to climate change. We may have to limit our diet to finger food until the replacement dishwasher arrives.

And, just in case you’re in any doubt, washing up with friends and family is not as convivial as that repair engineer made out. Visions of Little House on the Prairie evaporated within minutes of the drudgery. I’m thinking he probably hasn’t had to do much washing up in his time.

• Shelley-Anne Salisbury is a mediator, writer and the co-editor of Suburb News, themediationpod.net.