New, Shiny, Calm

The fridge-freezer died on Tuesday. It's Friday morning and the new one is in place and humming away nicely. I am focussed, efficient, and unemployed. The timing could not have been much worse, as we had both a dressed crab AND a particularly soft Camembert in there, which created a fairly unique aroma as they gently sweated away. Both the crab and the old fridge are now gone. The fridge to join the ever-growing EU fridge-mountain, and the crab, well to be honest it was pretty far gone anyway, so it got triple-wrapped and binned. Hopefully some grateful Larid will sniff it out in the next few days. We've kept the Camembert; it is much improved.

Actually I'm told that 85% of an old fridge is recycled. Shredded. That must be some shredder. Of course what they should actually do is build better fridges. It's another example of the world regressing as the culture of consumerism takes over. Years ago you would buy one fridge, and it would last your entire life, or perhaps longer than that. Manufacturers then realised that if they built really good stuff, then a) it cost more to build, and b) people only ever bought one and never came back. No, much better to build a nice plasticy fridge from the cheapest components known to man, pay some poor sod in the far-east 25p to assemble it, and with any luck it will conk out after the five minute manufacturers guarantee expires. At the same time, ensure that you price your engineer's visit (parts extra) at the exact point where by far the majority of people will go "Oh fuck it, let's just get a new one", and hey presto you have an order book with almost infinite longevity. Winner.

Anyway, it arrived yesterday afternoon, and in marked contrast to the other one, keeps food cold and frozen. The manufacturers guarantee ran out this morning at about 10am, but so far it is exceeding expectations. Look, here it is, neat, tidy, clean, and chilled.

If you're looking at this, and you're my mother, the vegetables are all at the bottom, and we're storing the beer for the neighbours.....

Thankfully, the run of rarities has temporarily ceased, so once again I have been able to get out on the patch. Three Meadow Pipits and a Jay has been my best effort. I think having two small children is largely prohibitive to finding migrants, though we did get a Spotted Flycatcher at the end of last week. Mostly I have been sorting stuff out at home. Usually at this point I trot out a long list of domestic tasks I have performed during the past few days in the vain hope that Mrs L will see fit to dish out a few BPs, but I'll skip that today. Suffice it to say I have done LOADS of things and I'll be out birding at the weekend, merci. In addition I have earmarked this afternoon for tidying. And admiring the fridge.