All our kitchen appliances, together with the washing macine and tumbel drier worked absolutely fine over Christmas.
The living room got hit! Biggest problem was the amplifier and that's getting the OOF treatment in another thread - thanks, fellas!

What I hadn't mentioned was the VCR, which failed totally a few days before. It's already living on borrowed time, as you need to hold the flap open with a knife in order to get the tape out. Now it won't read the timing markers on the tape, so it doesn't advance the tape while playing (at least, I think that's what's happening). I've seen this error before, and I think it may respond to a thorough cleaning - it doesn't get used a lot and the tapes are ancient, so there's likely to be a build-up of gunge on the heads and capstan-thingy.
So that's going to be two large lumps of kit in pieces on the living room floor. The boss ain't too happy.
