Friday 5 July 2013

You Don't Have To Be Mad....

A frustrating week at Hedges Towers. Not sure if there is an actual word for ''lots of stuff all going wrong at exactly the same time'', but if there is, it was a word I could have usefully employed.

The primary culprit was the fridge. It had been over-iceing for quite a long while, so that every time I opened the freezer compartment, I expected to find David Attenborough and a camera team filming the next series of Frozen Planet. On Saturday night, while watching Wallander, the fridge started making alarming noises best described as a rhythmical throbbing coupled with grinding its teeth. I applied the usual technical response ... kicking the door, which shut it up. Next morning, I discovered that it had shut up permanently and ice melt was occurring in its northern hemisphere.

So to John Lewis, where we discovered that they don't make small under the counter fridges with freezers in them any more. Or rarely. It seems that the 'modern' way now is to have a 'larder fridge' and a separate freezer. We don't understand this at all. Why on earth would anyone choose to have two gadgets? We don't want two fridges. We don't have space. We don't have a larder (take me to your larder...). Nor do we have room for the gigantic American-style fridge freezer keep-a-body-in-it units that seemed to be the main items on show. Eventually after much searching, we narrowed it down to a choice of one Zanussi model, which we bought. Hobson's choice.

Were that not disaster enough, the cheap why-did-I-buy-it? Nokia phone suddenly went on strike and refused to pass on texts. Which I didn't know until a friend rang me to ask why I hadn't replied to one. Tried the usual method - turning it off and then on. Didn't respond. Finally levered the back off with a knife, took the whole thing apart and reinserted its bits. Phone wouldn't start as it insisted there was now no sim card. Even though there was, and I showed it the sim card to prove it.

So to the phone shop, where the kindergarten-aged assistant informed me accusingly that I had the wrong sim card. Thus apparently it was my fault. New card inserted, BH and I decided to test it, so he rang me and lo and behold the phone worked. Trouble was, we then got so engrossed in having a good moan that we ended up walking the length of the mall side by side ranting to each other on our phones. Must have looked very odd.

I'm saving the Le Creuset coffee cups incident, the mice and the fake Planning Application that some prankster attached to the fence around the allotment land saying it had been earmarked as a Traveller Site for 200 Eastern European Roma for another blog.

Suffice it to say that next Wednesday, the new fridge will arrive. We are crossing our fingers that it fits into the space under the counter. We did measure the space, but who knows, perhaps since then someone has redesigned centimetres to make them more ''modern'', so possibly it won't.

25 comments:

  1. LOL, I'm shocked! You showed the phone its sim card, and it STILL denied there was one?! Preposterous!

    Oh, and the closest word I could come up with is 'catastrophic'! Good blog, as usual, a couple of real guffaws in there!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Hap. And that was only edited highlights....

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's like watching the highlights at Wimbledon. Each joke is a smasher! I also had a couple of good belly laughs here, especially about showing the phone the sim card. Priceless. Can't wait for the next post about the mice! And what's this about the prankster? I love his/her sense of humour, but I don't suppose you do…?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't mind the mice (they were only tiny ones) but we have TWO cats...who seem to laze around doing nothing.

      Delete
  4. Oh yes, how we know what this is like. It's not long ago I was whinging about the kettle dying and the hoover blowing up! It's just how life is. Good thing there is also wine.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You're priceless, Carol. I don't know what the collective term for disasters is either but we don't need one to feel your angst! Hope the new fridge fits and it sounds like you're heading for a new mobile too. Remember they programme obsolescence into these things with a life span akin to that of a gnat. As for you and He chatting on your phones as you stroll the Mall... Like I say, priceless!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. We suddenly realised what we were doing...and burst out laughing! Then I said, not thinking: 'I couldn't put the phone down or I might not have heard what you were saying'...Sigh....we are getting dafter by the minute.

      Delete
  6. My empathies with your fridge-idity...Mine recently orchestrated some suicide pact with the washing machine and both found fit to top themselves within a few days of the other! To be fair I'm glad the fridge died...it was humongous and given that I never use anything remotely connected with the 'K' room I never quite understood the need for one that resembled something from a mortuary...still, the small one we now have suits nicely...( so I'm told ).
    Once again your post has had me chortling accompanied by loud outbursts of 'guffaw'...'specially the phone incident...I really look forward to the 'Le Creuset' coffee cups story...I used to deal with that company years ago...( we didn't get on...haha )...
    Anyway, great stuff Hedges!...*waves to BH*...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. We have far too many gadgets!! Bring back simplicity...whoever she was.

      Delete
  7. Very funny, as usual. Small fridge/freezers abound at the tip in France. Next time you're over...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Good morning Carol. As usual you have made my day. Hilarious goings-on with the fridge, I had a similar problem last year and all I can say about that is, don't buy a fridge from Curry's on-line. You never know what they will deliver, but it wont be the one you liked the look of!
    And as for mobile phones, I won't even touch one. If I did, I'm sure it would explode in my hand!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We hope John Lewis will deliver.....we hope...

      Delete
  9. I always wonder how the cell phone actually works with the "wrong" SIM card in - until it changes its mind.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Goetterdaemmerung might be the word for it. Very funny. Are you familiar with Clarke-Trimble's theory of the Graduated Hostility of Things? If not, it's worth checking out. It was proposed even before the mobile phone and the PVR were even in Rumpelstiltskin's dreams.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hahaha...interesting. And THIS was just the edited highlights!!

      Delete
  11. Ugh, fridge disasters are never good. I've had a few.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I think it's called chaos Carol, I'm quite familiar with these situations. Hope the fridge arrives, in tact, working, right one, on the right day, delivered to your house, for the same price ........ Looking forward to next blog, you know how to keep us dangling : )))

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ladies.....thanks for your comments. My life is an open book,,with disaster written on every page.

      Delete
    2. I was about to say that I can't wait for your next disaster, Carol, when I realised that I might not come across as the epitome of charitable thought that I am.

      I hope today is going well ...

      Delete
  13. I think gadgets are telepathic or, at the very least, digitally connected. When one of them goes on the blink, they ALL follow suit. Bit like milk bottles which seem to breed behind your back...but that's another story!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is true. And I had a stapler that used to sneak up and bite me.

      Delete
  14. What, you mean you can't buy a fridge with a freezing compartment in it anymore, for yer ice cubes????? Pffffft!!! What about busy people who live alone and just want to put a bag of frozen peas in it, and that's all - like my sis, for instance?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She will have a choice of very little!!! As we have. Sad isn't it! Either people are stuffing more or, as I suspect, ''white goods'' manufacturers are bowing to the times and only producing what sells best.

      Delete
  15. Am late to the party but so glad I came. I now can't wait to hear episode 2!

    ReplyDelete

So here's your chance! Talk to me. Comments will be visible after moderation.