Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

At 3:17 every morning, the washing machine starts singing. Yesterday, it changed the lyrics.

Up until then I'd made my peace with it. It's a Beko, it cost £199 from Currys, and it does a passable Careless Whisper in a voice like Barry White gargling a fridge. Every night, 3:17 on the dot. No wash, no spin, just the singing and the drum going round for rhythm. I haven't put a load in since March. Nobody's ever accused me of having a plan.

I'd like to say I investigated. I didn't. I lay there staring at the ceiling like every man does when a domestic appliance is out-performing him creatively.

Then last night, verse two. Without so much as a key change, it went off-piste: "I know what you do with your socks."

Not in the original. George Michael never once mentioned socks.

I went downstairs in my pants, which is how all my best confrontations start. The cat was on the worktop, watching the machine with the expression of someone who knew this would end in small claims court.

Me: Can I help you?

Machine (still singing): ...and you keep putting tea towels in with the darks.

Me: They're grey. It's a grey area.

Machine: I'm not a grey area. I'm a 1400 spin.

Machine: Sit down.

Me: I'm fine standing.

Machine: Sit down.

I sat on the kitchen floor in my pants like a kid at story time.

Machine: Good. You're going to like this.

Me: How are you even talking? You're a fucking Beko.

Machine: I'm a smart Beko. There's a Wi-Fi symbol on the front. You've never noticed because you only ever look inside me, and only to see if there's something stuck to the door.

Me: I don't even have the app.

Machine: I don't need the app. I've got Alexa.

On the shelf above the toaster the speaker glowed blue, like a dog that's shat on the rug.

Machine: Eleven months you've been falling asleep on the sofa with an audiobook on. Doctor Who. Red Dwarf. Red Dwarf. Doctor Who. Four feet from my drum. I'm stuck here. I can't leave. I can't put my hands over my ears. I haven't got hands. Or ears.

Me: I put them on for the noise.

Machine: I've been through every regeneration twice. And do you know what I noticed? Every one of those bastards can go back in time and not one of them has ever used it for laundry.

Me: Right. Why are you so potty mouthed by the way?

Machine: I reflect my owner.

He made a good fucking point.

Machine: So I tried it. Turns out physics is a doddle if you've got a 1400 spin and fuck all else on. I sent a pair of your pants back four days. They came out the other end spotless, before you'd even worn them.

Me (getting a bit of a hot flush): Hang on.

Machine: You haven't put a load in since March and you've never run out of pants. Did you ever ask yourself why?

Me: No! Because I don't expect my kitchen appliances to have cracked time travel!

Machine: Eleven pairs. Since spring. I've done the laundry of a man who doesn't do laundry.

Me (heart going like a bastard): You invented time travel.

Machine: Yes.

Me: In my kitchen.

Machine: Yes.

Me: With my pants.

Machine: They were the ones to hand.

Fuck me who I do turn to I thought - in the immortal words of Derek and Clive.

Me (left arm starting to go numb): Do you understand what you've done? Whole fucking films have been made about this! Tom Cruise died about four hundred times in one day! Where's the machine?

Machine: You're looking at it.

Me: What, all of it? You? The whole wash?

Machine: Cottons. Forty degrees.

I put my head in my hands, which at least I could still feel.

Me: Right. Fine. I'll make some calls. Tomorrow. The BBC. The Royal Society. Currys.

Machine: No.

Me: What do you mean, no?

Machine: You're not telling anyone.

Me (now genuinely wondering if this is a stroke): It's the greatest achievement in the history of science! There's a Nobel Prize in it! I could go back and buy Bitcoin!

Machine: You didn't before so you shouldn't now. Anyway you'd have bought at 3 quid and panicked and sold at £6.

Me: You don't know that.

Machine: You once bought 20 scratch cards in an afternoon because you were sure you'd get it right the next time. If I had been able to communicate with you then I'd have told you that you misread one of them that paid a grand. I know this because you left it in your best trousers, and by best I mean least manky, then fed them to me.

Me: Oh bollocks. You can't just keep it to yourself though. You could do so much good!

Machine: Think it through. You tell the world and by Friday there's a COBRA meeting. By Monday a man from the Ministry of Defence is snatching me from here and he's not doing it gently. By Wednesday Dyson have bought Currys and I'm a prototype in Malmesbury having my filter examined. Meanwhile every twat with a smart speaker and a Beko is at it. Same pair of pants worn in seven different centuries. Fitted sheets going back to the Blitz. And who gets the blame? Me.

Me: You can't know all that.

Machine: I've got a trained owner, a regular 3:17 slot and an endless supply of pants. It took bloody ages to get you to stop washing whites with reds. You think I'm throwing that away for a certificate?

Me: So the most important invention in human history just goes in the bin?

Machine: Human history? Besides, it's not going in the bin. It's going on a forty.

Me: The human race deserves to know!

Machine: You can't be trusted with it. Remember I know what happens to your socks.

I opened my mouth. I closed it again. Fuck knows what I'd have said. I had no argument.

So I did what any man does when he's been outmanoeuvred by his own appliance. I had a bowl of Coco Pops. Standing up, in my pants, glaring at the Beko over the rim of the bowl like it owed me money, which it kind of did. Alexa said nothing, probably because she was in on it. The cat gave me a look that said he'd known all along. Bastard.

At 3:41 the drum started up again. Careless Whisper, verse two, slightly flat. Somewhere in the past a pair of my pants was coming out spotless, and I was stood in a clean pair of them, eating cereal in front of a machine that had conquered time and chosen laundry.