It's boiling hot today, so I have spent most of it under the kitchen work top attempting to fix the washing machine which has packed up.

It stopped working a couple of weeks ago and I've already had one crack at it which turned out to be unsuccessful.

At first I thought it might have been the programmer/timer but this is pretty unusual I hear. Next thought is that the outlet might be blocked and this was stopping it, so I took it all to bits, cleaned out the pump and the trap (it was full of crap) and then put it all back together. It did work this time but as the kitchen was pretty dark I was able to see a load of blue sparks coming out the back of the machine... not a good sign.

So today I have had another go, took it all to bits and removed the motor. The brushes are a bit worn but OK. The commutator was in pretty bad shape, it was all black instead of copper coloured. I cleaned it up with a fine file and assembled it all again and it seems to be working OK so far (I'm letting it complete a cycle while I type this).

So I'm pretty chuffed because we really didn't need to be spending a couple of hundred quid on a new machine, even repair bills would have been a bit of a streach.

I knew that whole Electrical Engineering apprenticeship wasn't a complete waste of 4 years...