A fridge too far

I had a lovely holiday - thanks for asking. No I didn’t being any rock back. But the de-stress started with an unscheduled defrost.

We were really looking forward to our break. A relaxing seven days of walking, eating cakes, drinking cappuccinos, eating cakes, mooching around shops and eating cakes. Did I mention the cakes?

A short hop to the Yorkshire Dales meant no middle-of-the-night alarm call to struggle through the dark and hang around at an airport. No “who’s got the passports?!” moments. No wondering why people are drinking at breakfast time whilst you’re looking at a pile of Toblerone.

We had coffee in bed, then after a leisurely shower I went downstairs for breakfast. Devouring my cereal, something seemed odd. The flakes and milk tasted fine, but something was... different. It was very quiet, too.

On putting the milk back in the fridge, the penny dropped. The fridge wasn’t fridgey any more. It was room temperature. As were the contents. The freezer section was still icy, but stuff close to the door succumbed to a tentative finger prod.

Mild panic ensued. Some bits could come on holiday with us in a cool box, but tough decisions lay ahead. The tatty old overflow freezer in the cellar was full, so an extended game of deciding what to keep based on value, volume and likelihood of food poisoning ensued.

The half dozen pots of partially consumed hummus, frozen on the “use by date”, made it to the bin eventually anyway. The homemade soup that we didn’t really like vanished down the sink with the help of a running hot tap. The unidentifiable creamy coloured stuff in an unmarked tub was an easy win. Reduced to clear bread cut to the soul with every slice destined for the wheelie bin.

A lightning quick decision was made on a new fridge-freezer from a local supplier, lined up to arrive the afternoon we got back. Off we went, deeply troubled that our bin might violently assault a passer-by who got too close.

Our 17 year old fridge-freezer, trusty, wheezy, rattly, keeper of cold stuff, had breathed it’s asthmatic last. We came back from holiday to an answering machine message saying our new one had been badly damaged in transit, and was three days later OK? Have you tried living without a fridge for 72 hours? There’s only so much you can do by rotating freezer-blocks in a plastic container in the cellar.

Eventually, the replacement arrived. An unfamiliar white obelisk – a silent, cold, sentinel watching over us and probably sneering at our choice of yoghurts and high chocolate-to-vegetables ratio. The door isn’t as deep, the light’s a cold blue not a warm yellow, and the shelves are different heights. My carefully honed ‘system’ has been ruined.

On the plus side, we’re not in hospital being treated for some gastrowotsical emergency. And I saved the tub of chocolate ice cream. But I already told you this. Didn’t you get the postcard?

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 5th of May 2017. The version used online retained the same title, but the print edition added "Taking things a..." in front, for some reason.

My newspaper column ideas notebook contains hasty scribbles, some words and puns that I like, and in a lot of cases just a few brief sentences on a subject. Whilst many columns get written entirely from scratch on the spot, this was a notepad one that had been luring for a few weeks.

When nothing comes to me in the couple of days of window I have to write it, I delve into the notebook to see what I've got. This was an easy one, as it needed no research. 

(CD A-Z: Mike Oldfield's "Light + Shade"... the rockier "Shade" disc.)