Getting the green light

I almost had a new career today. After the demise of the dishwasher that I am supposed to be selling with the house, I went onto eBay, and bought a new circuit board, the genuine article for the brand and model that I refuse to replace without a fight. It cost less than half of what I could have paid if ordered through the engineer who diagnosed the cause of death earlier in the week. This engineer was a man of few words and less charm, but seemed to know what he was doing. Except that he didn't ring me back as he promised, so he doesn't get the job.....

Perhaps I could install the new circuit board myself, I wondered, if I was very careful to copy exactly where every plug-in bit went as I dismantled the dead one.

It was fiddly, partly because there were lots of tiny plastic lugs that I feared snapping if treated too enthusiastically, and there was a bit of tutting and walking away taking deep breaths, but I did it eventually, and reassembled the control panel with just a touch of conceit panache. I counted all the screws out, and I counted them all back in again. Maybe I could retrain as an appliance repairwoman.

And then I switched the machine on, flinching slightly as though setting off a rather dodgy-looking firework.

And it worked! It showed a green light!

For a while. It drains, it hums to itself, it now shows another light for the programme delay button where no light has shown before. I feel proud; I installed a circuit board without breaking any plasticky bits or electrocuting myself, the delay indicator light is now working, and I got the crucial green light.

But it won't fill. Nothing is kinked, or trapped, or blocked. The machine is heaved in and out of its slot under the worktop, taking care not to rip the vinyl flooring where there is already a little bit of duct tape from a similar manoeuvre years ago. My, duct tape lasts and lasts! No built-in obsolescence there!

I fiddle and check, mutter and wonder. And all the time the green light stays on, but now it's flashing, which indicates a fault. A Fault, that's it; not Which Fault, which would be more helpful.

Back to consult Google. I find lots of sites complaining bitterly about this model of dishwasher, although I suspect that every dishwasher - well, any domestic appliance, really - has similar vituperative sites for sweary and frustrated people to vent their spleen and warn other hapless folk never ever to buy what they themselves were lured into buying.

Lots of problems are described on those sites, along with lots of the worst spelling and grammar I have ever seen, and a scattering of proposed solutions, all assuming a degree of knowledge (you need to dismantle the motor and take off the spray arm, minding the membrane in the sump and daringly blow through the drain hose, then, perhaps with an air of rapture, verify the pump, and then there's the float assembly throat which of course you mustn't throttle, but you must note which lights are blinking from left to right if it were the 3rd and the 5th it would mean 001010 Main Motor Pressure Switch Blocked Filter and please make sure you send Auntie Ethel a postcard to thank her for that picture of the Town Hall she sent you for your birthday, and then perhaps you feel the need to stomp off into the next room with steam coming out of your ears.

But, breathing slowly and deeply, you go back again, and take out the filter - not lovely, a bit gunked-up, benefits from a little rinse, but is not gruesomely blocked with dead mice or mangled plastic forks; gamely, you try to remove the lower washer arm - easier to remove my own arm, I thought - and optimistically hold the start button in for a little while, hoping that it works for longer than 2 minutes this time. It doesn't.

Decide that this will all wait until tomorrow. Or until I can afford to have a repairman out again. It would appear that a career in appliance repairs isn't for me. I'm off to verify a cup of tea now.