New fridge

p. For weeks we have been dicing with food poisoning daily because the fridge was on its last legs. We put a thermometer inside to monitor the temperature, and most of the time, it struggled to keep below 11°C--hardly an ideal environment for preserving food. As we rent the flat (and our landlady owns the appliances), we couldn't just go and and buy a new one, so we had a long period of negotiation with the landlady before she agreed to pay for a new one.

p. Finally, the new fridge arrived. We decided to get one from a small local company based about half a mile away, which had the pleasant side effect of being able to choose a time for delivery. I randomly suggested 11am, and at 11:05am the guys turned up with our shiny new fridge. I did have a bit of a "BSAG":http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/about.html moment though; one chap asked if I had a pair of pliers to adjust the levelling feet with. I said that I thought my husband had them with him in his bike repair kit, and he replied that I should get him to level the feet for me when he came back. Since they were nice enough to lug the old fridge down the stairs for the Council to collect, I bit back a barbed comment about my surprising proficiency with pliers despite the lack of a Y chromosome.

p. Fridges are easy to take for granted until they stop functioning properly. I keep opening the fridge to marvel at the low temperature reading on the thermometer--2°C! The new model is also somewhat larger than the old one, so we seem to have acres of luxurious fridge interior to fill with lovely food. Non-UK readers will probably wonder what the heck I'm talking about here, but others will know about the pathetically small dimensions of the ice box in the average British fridge. Crucially, our old one (even when not encrusted with a few feet of ice) lacked the height to store a tub of "Haagen-Daz":http://www.haagendazs.com/ or "Ben & Jerry's":http://www.benjerry.com/ ice cream upright. It was possible to fit the tub in, but only by performing the following tedious procedure:

Eat approximately one third of the ice cream (OK, so this bit isn't too arduous)

Squish the top of the tub so that it forms a very flattened ellipse

Try to cram the tub on its side into the ice box

If too much ice has accumulated in the box, scrape away at it with a knife, uncovering some wrinkled frozen peas which have somehow become embedded in it

Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the tub fits

Return later to find that ice box has decided to semi-defrost itself, and there is now a molten pool of ice cream on the floor.

p. Now we have the luxury of an ice box which is tall enough to accommodate an upright tub. I predict some fairly intensive bouts of ice cream eating, and drinking things with ice cubes in them--just because we can.