RIP II

As you may or may not know, I have a fridge dedicated to stocks of Amstel and Stella lager type beers. It is an old one, of possible Soviet ancestry. It shed the door to its freezer compartment long since, the precise calibrations of its thermostat have long been forgotten and its light lit up only as the mood took it but it has, as stalwart as the defenders of Stalingrad, served me faithfully for many a long year.

Unfortunately, the ice around said freezer compartment had become, in the words of the great Don Van Vliet (ask councillor Bob, he'll know), fast and bulbous. A defrosting was in order.

So, making a rather uninformed assumption...the manual was in cyrillic...I depressed the button and waited. 24 hours later, I discerned a swelling pool neath its off-white mass and came to the inescapable conclusion that I had pressed the right button. I opened the door further...such an adventurous life I lead, wouldn't you say...and was faced with just as massive a bulk of ice as I had been heretofore and hitherto. Only this time it had a surface sheen of fresh melt.

Now, maybe I should have elaborated on the geographical position of said fridge but I will do so now. It is wedged at the far, narrow end of my larder/pantry/utility room...a kind of indoor shed if the truth be known...and the water it sheds during defrosting escapes via a pipe extruding from its rear. Under normal circumstances that is. Normal circumstances being obviously those under which less volume of ice has accrued due to the lassissitude of the owner of the aforementioned appliance. Present circumstances were such that water was haemorrhaging, niagara like out of the door cavity and it was only the precipient application of numerous towels that prevented serious warpage of floorboards in the great room.

I, quite understandably I feel given the situation, had a 'bugger this' moment and unearthed a rather large hammer and the biggest fuck off screwdriver in my possession. I was quite happily chiselling away when I became aware of a hissing noise, similar to that of gas escaping under pressure. The state of my mind at the time can best be described by informing you that it occurred to me that I may have inadvertently pierced a bag of the Hungarian equivalent of Birds Eye peas. Wrong.

Anyway, upshot is that I have killed my fridge and am now drinking warm beer. Life is hard.

Maybe I should contact JonnyB about the possibility of acquiring an internet fridge.