Keeping cool under pressure

Our freezer has a mind of its own. And not always on the job in hand. Tonight as we're sitting watching television in the other room, the warning ding starts up on the freezer.
"You must have left the door open," I say, starting up. The noise immediately stops.
"I don't think so," Herself says, swirling the ice cubes about in her soft drink.
As soon as my bum hits the seat:
"Ding...! Ding...! Ding...!"
We go out and inspect what little there is to inspect.
The digital readout says -16C for the freezer and 1C for the fridge, like it's supposed to do. But the whole thing is ominously quiet.
I poke it. Herself moves bottles from the floor in case the feng shui is being upset. I open and close the fridge door. I open the freezer door. It has a disturbing slick look that speaks of malfunction.
"I think it's defrosting."
Immediately Herself falls back on 100,000 years of female evolution in the face of imminent calamity by asking as many questions within 60 seconds as it is possible to ask.
"What's wrong?
"Is it broken?
"Should we get another?
"Is the fuse gone in the plug?
"Shall I move another bottle?
"Should we start putting things in the other freezer?
"Is it safe to use ice that defrosted?
"Was it the weather?
"Was it the cats?
"Is it broken?
"Shall we buy another?
"Is the fuse gone in the plug?
"Why are you choking me?"
We ferry geriatric cuts of meat in their papyrus wraps to the small freezer in the ultilty room, in turn emptying from it the store of bread Herself squirelled away in there last Christmas when the snow levels meant we would obviously soon have 100 extra guests all eager for toast. In between trips, I press some buttons experimentally on the wonky freezer. It's now reading a balmy 9C in the freezer. I press a button labelled "Turbo Freeze" and a second later the motor starts to run again.

"It's fixed!"

We do a little dance then retrieve all the "we'll never finish that" stores that we just binned, plus Santa Claus's sliced pans, and shove them back onto the empty shelves. In a few moments, the temperature is 8C and we're on the way back to peaceful TV watching.

In ten minutes time, the dial indicates minus figures. Grand. Everything going in the right direction.

Half and hour later, during an ad break, Herself shouts from the kitchen:

"It's minus 25! It'll EXPLODE!"

I rush out and open the freezer door.

The Bird's Eye Polar Bear isn't so fucking chatty about the standard of my fish cakes any more. He's lying very, very still, a look of mild surprise on his clothy white face.

In fact, I didn't know that fish cakes could chatter like comedy false teeth, but the din is rattling all the salad dressing bottles in the fridge next door.

Bela Lugosi appears from the gathering white mist flowing about the kitchen, sinks his teeth into Herself's outstretched neck, then makes like a bat. I ignore the constant thumps of his dashing his head against the closed Velux ceiling windows in the dining room.

I undo the big fat freeze button and we head off to bed, content in the knowledge that the temperature is on its way back up.

I expect a tropical jungle to greet me in the morning.

Why the cat smells marmalade on my leg

I've a head-cold.
Herself has a dicky shoulder.
The weather has been Arctic cold.
This morning Herself knocked over one of our small, cheap, glass salt cellars and broke it into pieces. Bad luck was definitely supposed to follow.
As I'd been promising Herself we'd get one, we bought a small, flat-screen telly for the kitchen today and I couldn't get the thing to tune in until I disconnected all the cables from the grown-up telly and DVD and video player and the digital box and the PC and possibly the service for the whole road. But it tuned in, eventually.
In the meantime, Herself did everything possible to find jobs that would aggravate her sore shoulder.
"Aaargh!" She shouted from upstairs.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm washing the bathroom floor."
I watched the snow on the screen and pressed another button.
"Use the other arm," I said.
There were barely audible murmurings from somewhere upstairs.
There was a twanging, crashing noise from the landing.
"What was that?" I shouted up, as a fuzzy Irish rugby team made heavy work of defeating burly, blurry-blue Italians.
"Clothes horse," came the reply. "I'm putting clothes on the bannisters to dry."
"Use the other arm," I said. "By the way... Did you tell the doctor about that shoulder?"
"No."
"I see."
I fiddled with coaxial cable and started tacking staples into the side of the door saddle. The vacuum cleaner started up somewhere behind me.
"Aaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaa-aargh!"
I stopped tapping, momentarily.
"What is it?"
"My shoulder! I can't finish the hoovering! It hurts!"
"Leave the hoovering then!"
"I can't!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's Saturday. I have to have the house clean on Saturday."
"Okay, I'll finish the hoovering later."
I tapped in some more staples, crawling about on the tiled floor, backing into the dining room and bumping against chairs and one hot radiator.
I hear another "Aaaargh!"
"What....?"
"I'm mopping the living room floor. The bucket is heavy and hurts my shoulder when I pick it up!"
"Use the other hand to pick it up then."
Sweat is dripping onto the floor as I pull cable along behind the radiator, twist it in behind the computer desk and twiddle it under the dining room door into the living room and the TV signal outlet box.
I say:
"Have you taken any anti-inflammatories?"
"No."
I plug in the plug and the picture tunes in on Herself's new early-morning putting-on-makeup-in-the-kitchen piece of telly technology.
I say:
"It's working."
Herself meets me in the kitchen and reaching for a glass of lemonade with her right hand -- the one that is attached to the arm that is swinging on the dodgy shoulder -- she knocks it all over the counter. She says something nasty and starts mopping up the spill.
I pass her the rolling pin. She's going to make a meat pie for dinner if it kills us both.
Opening a cupboard (with her right hand, the one that has the dodgy shoulder) she ducks as a half pot of marmalade sails out and falls to its death on the floor tiles below. Apart from the bits of glass glued together by the marmalade, the rest of it goes into a hundred little pieces that scatter all over the place. A large wodge of peel sticks to the side of my leg. We stand looking at it as it slowly slides down the cuff of my trousers, slithers down my boot and finally comes to rest.
"You know," I say. "It's been that kind of day, hasn't it?"
"Yes," she says, through gritted teeth.
Pastry gets a pounding with the occasional accompaniment of a loud
"Aaargh!"

Furniture, DIY, Skip bags and bulbs

I've not been online much recently for various reasons, chief among them being exhaustion. Herself has moved to a new job, which has upscuttled our household routine. I am truely commuting now -- a bus each way, instead of the cushy lift each morning, followed by a bus ride home in the evening -- as she is now working in a place which is in the opposite direction to my morning travel.

Morning travellers are a different lot to the evening varieties I have encountered up to now. And the earlier buses have a few surprises as to routes and to the temper of the bus drivers.

"Do you go to the hospital?" a woman asked from a bus stop, stepping up to the driver.
"No," he said.
The woman stepped back down off the bus and awaited the next double decker.

I thought this one over and decided that the driver was giving a very literal answer to her query. No, the bus didn't go to the hospital. Rather it went to The Square, and the hospital was on the route. So while he was being absolutely truthful, he was not being customer friendly. There is a bus stop right outside the hospital gate he could have dropped the woman at.

The past couple of weeks have been eventful in the search for and acquisition of new furniture for the house. A much hated 1970s dining-room unit, the type that holds drinks glasses and had a little cubby hole for bottles of booze, was remaindered. I quite liked it, but Herself said it had to go. We acquired the mammy and daddy of all dining-room tables and a platoon of leather dining-room chairs to go with it. And some matching -- or nearly matching -- smaller units to store the glasses and ornaments in. We shall not be ashamed of our Christmas dinner settings at least.

I have also been trying to complete the kitchen project, which at this stage requires only some final positioning of some units, a swap of two applicances, and the installation of kicker boards (plinths), and some fiddly bits. B&Q has been unusually unhelpful and I haven't helped myself much either. I phoned the Tallaght store and was told that only two of the four items I need are in stock there. The sprout on the phone told me that they didn't sell one of the missing items, even though I had seen it with my own eyes only a few weeks before.

The problem is the length of the last few timbers, which are not convenient to carry by car. I will have to get them ordered and delivered.

The Liffey Valley branch is under major refurbishment at the moment and their kitchen showroom staff are languishing in a large temporary building in the car park. I phoned two weeks ago and the girl on the switchboard was able to confirm that yes, they did have Item 1 and Item 2 in stock, but by Item 3 she was obviously being distacted by the flashing lights on the phone, and when she said:

"Yes we probably have that,"

at Item 4, I was not confident that she was giving me her fullest attention. She took my phone number and said that the kitchen showroom staff would phone me back to address my queries. No call was ever received.

We drove over to the store later that day in a particularly wintery rainstorm and were told by an assistant that:

1. Items 1 and 2 were in stock.
2. Items 3 and 4 were not in stock.
3. Deliveries are made only on Thursdays.
4. No, I could not buy the items in advance, as they were not in stock, but they would be in stock this week, at which stage I could buy them.

I phoned again yesterday to see if they had come in. The girl on the switch warned me that they were "very busy" in the kitchen showroom and may not be answering their phone. However, the phone was picked up. I quoted the barcode numbers of the four items, whereupon the assistant asked me for my mobile phone number as it would take five minutes to look them up and confirm they were available.

"Ah."

I don't know my mobile phone number. Nor does there appear to be a method on my current phone of looking it up while one is on a call. I forgot that I had Herself's phone in my pocket, which contained my mobile phone number in its Contacts list. So I said I would phone back.

When I did, no-one answered at the switch. Ever.

So, it looks like another drive over to Liffey Valley is required. But not this weekend, which has now all but passed. I shall try again next weekend. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have availed of an A1 Waste free skip bag offer and filled a big yellow container with broken up kitchen units and other stuff we have been accumulating in our garden since the never-ending kitchen project and the never-ending preparations for Christmas have begun. I moved about a tonne of plywood and chipboard today and planted around 50 or so daffodil bulbs that had not made it into the ground before now. I containerised them, which is to say I stuffed them into pots and hoped for the best. Herself says they are not house-broken, so I can't experiment with forcing some of them to bloom in time for Christmas. They are outside as I type, possibly wondering what the drop in temperature is all about, since they were rather inadvisedly being stored in a heated cupboards for the past month.

Busy, busy, busy.

DIY : Some during and more during pics

So, the kitchen has basically gone from.... this stage... and this stage....:

To something a little beyond THIS STAGE:

Whipped

"Now," Herself says. "Don't get mad when I say this. But..."
I am lying on my back on the tiled floor of the kitchen, staring wildly at the ceiling.
I have not washed any part of my anatomy in, we think, three weeks.
It is possible I have not spoken with anyone other than a cat in a month.
My hands are claws into which only some of the simplest, most primitive tools with which one hits something very hard fit.
I have sweated 321 litres of water.
I have wrapped my belt three times around my waist.
I have eaten only some crumbs from an upended toaster found in the cupboard beneath the oven.
I am blind.
I am repeating to myself, over and over: "Make it work. Make it work. Make it work."
She says:
"The door of the cabinet is on crooked. It is obviously higher on the right-hand side than on the left."
I whimper.
My eyebrow, over my left eye, begins to twitch uncontrollably.
And yet I find myself on hands and knees with screwdriver in hand adjusting the screws of the hinges of the cabinet door.
My knees shall probably never work properly again.
My spleen has given up excreting whatever substance a spleen is made to excrete.
"Make it work," I mutter.
"Make it work."

I hate plumbing

As the keyboard floats by again on its circuit through the dining room on its way to the sink hole in the kitchen floor, I have just a few moments to record for you the fact that I hate... no despise... plumbing in all its forms.

That is not in any way to denigrate that portion of people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of professional pumbing, of course. I have grown in admiration of these folk. I am speaking only personally and from my very limited but, unfortunately, most recent DIY experience.

I have quite literally been baptised in the mysteries of tube cutting, compression joints, non-organic olives and faulty stop cocks over the last few days. I have found that I could not cut a piece of pipe straight if my life was to depend upon it. I have wrestled with brass fittings and adjustable wrenches, stubborn copper pipes and infuriating bends and angles. I have literally been thrown in at the deep end.

As the lapping around my ankles grows more insistent and I really should be thinking of carrying the television up the stairs, I should like to give you my few DIY tips and observations for home plumbing while I can still think of them. They are:

1. You can never have too many lengths of copper pipe. The first time you bend one into a facsimile of a novelty drinking straw by accident you will know this fact is true.


2. You will always attract helpful people while sawing copper pipe in the back of your car at the local DIY store. When I say "Helpful", I mean "trying to be helpful." The first man who grabbed the end of the pipe and held it as I was sawing it so that we might close the boot was indeed quite helpful. If he'd stuck around until I sawed the ends off the other two lengths of pipe, it would have been even more helpful. "Bend it," was the advice of the second helpful passerby. He proceeded to throw his purchases into the boot and bend the last foot of the second pipe I was sawing to demonstrate how useful his advice was. Quite apart from being left with a pipe whose last few inches were bent into uselessness, I was then unexpectedly involved in sifting through the purchases which were mine and the purchases which were his. He left, contentedly, with (I think) only his own goods. Herself stubbed out her ciggy and got out of the driver's seat to hold the final piece of pipe. I don't think I could have benefited from a third plumbing Samaratin. "Swallow it," he might have said. And by that stage I might have tried.


3. Never trust a compression joint, nor written advice on how to make one. I took to heart the article which off-handedly advised one not to turn the nut too far as this might flatten the pipe and spent two days fixing leaks while awaiting disaster if the wrench actually tightened anything.


4. Metric and Imperial measure aren't the same. Witness my fancy taps and the Frankenstein's laboratory in the cupboard beneath the sink.


5. Cheap and cheerful waste kits are neither cheap nor do they lead to much cheer. You should find a big bag of O-rings and keep them handy. The ones which come with the kit are made of regurgitated winegums dipped in starch.

Tomorrow, if I can lasso it as it circles the paired animals on the slowly sinking chipboard ark, I shall install the dishwashing machine. I am so looking forward to it already.

Holiday how are ya?

I'm coughing up sawdust tonight following a marathon session of cabinet building, drilling, jig-sawing and the divil knows what in the name of getting the never-ending kitchen project finally finished.

Tomorrow, I plan on some waste pipe installation to go with our new sink-and-a-half set-up, then demolition of the last hanging on part of the original sink and pipework.

My drill is starting to show signs of wear and tear to match my unhappy lungs.

It is looking promising though.

Home baking

"Have you ever eaten one of my sponge cakes?" Herself asks me, the other evening, as we are watching television.
"Nope," I say, swigging my beer.
"Didn't you know me when I used to bake sponge cakes and butterfly buns and flans and maringues?"
"Er... no."
"I shall make us a sponge cake at the weekend."

Come the weekend there was a crisis of ounces verses grams. I was entertaining my father in the other room and so I couldn't help much.

"Look it up on the Internet," I said.

An hour later I was eating.... something.... sponge-like....

"Do you like it?"
"Er... yes...."

I chewed at the lump of fruit-topped, cream-filled yellowish stuff. Having to chew or gnaw at a sponge cake is probably an indication that it hasn't come out right.

"I think I didn't get the measurements right," she said. "And I think there was something about folding the mixture rather than beating it."

I seprated my upper teeth from my lower ones with an effort, long enough to say:

"No, babe. It's fine, really."

There was a definite clunk when a piece of leftover spong hit the bottom of the kitchen bin. I could feel strange protestations starting up in my gut.

Herself Googled for sponge cake recipes.

"I know what went wrong!" she shouted in to the other room. "I'll make you a proper one tomorrow!"

So, today, I'm eating a wafer-thin sponge-cake that hasn't turned out either. But it is lighter than yesterday's.

"I know where I went wrong. I'll make another one tomorrow that will be right this time. I promise."

My gut is thanking Heaven that we're back at work on Tuesday. It might not have survived an extra day of sponge making.

"You can write about it," Herself said. "On condition you write a sequel when it turns out...."

Watch this space.

I didn't know a nose got indigestion

Fellah on the bus in front of me with long legs looks at the generous amount of space for the legs between the seat in front of me and the seat in front of him, decides, like me, that the back of the seat in front of me is obviously broken which is why it is leaning back on me, sits down and squashes my patient leg.

A patient leg, by the way, is the leg you have to have when you know you are too lazy to move to another seat and you have only started your journey, so its better to stay patient when a long-legged fellah is inadvertantly pushing the back of his seat into your kneecap. Eventually, I managed to crab the leg sideways into a kind of deformed Elvis on stage position which meant *no-one* was likely to sit beside me, although, to be fair, a kind of scarecrow female person (an I.T. student) did sit down briefly on my outside before she figured out a window seat was available elsewhere and moved.

So Daddly Long Legs turns out to have a hair treatment on which, when combined with the fumes from the open window, smells exactly like raw hamburger. A very raw hamburger, bloody and fresh. My nostrils sucked it all up as I sat in my contorted state on my seat.

(Lately, I am beginning to think that the part of my brain which deals with my sense of smell has been entirely overcome with alcohol. I have strange tastes and smells at different times of the day which to me is a reasonable indication of some kind of brain damage.)

To get back to the tale, I actually *like* the smell of raw hamburger, although I would not choose it as a variety of cologne, worn in the hair or otherwise.

It was no surprise to find four Dunnes stores hamburgers defrosting in a microwave oven when I got home then.

But, alas, one at least is trying to make its way back up my neck as I type this. Perhaps it was the association with the bus and the scarecrow person and the hair treatment, because I enjoyed the cooking and eating of my share this evening. Dunnes Stores hamburgers tend not to lodge in my throat, so this is something of a surprise.

I may revisit said burgers later in the night. I hope not.

In any case, I think I may have some colourful dreams because of them. On Sunday night last I ate some cheese before bed and dreamt I (and many people I work with) was called up to serve in an army unit in some kind of national emergency. I liked the camouflage gear and the hand-held electronic device that didn't seem to do anything. I had no idea who the enemy was and when I woke up I found I still don't. Not so much a dream as a general observation then.

I'm off to see what state my sleeping mind is in in the circumstances.

Bank Holiday Monday

"Arrgh! I've lost the television channel!" Herself shouts from the other room.
I have pulled up the chair to the computer table and am about to surf my handful of regularly-frequented sites on the Interweb.
"What?" I say, turning down Europe, playing "The Final Countdown", in glorious 80s rock-god stylee on the PC's disk drive.
"Hurry up! I've lost the channel and yer woman is about to take away Jason's baby on Corrie!"
"What does it say on screen?"
"AV something!"
"Press the button below the green button."
"That's on the other remote! I'm using the video remote!"
Herself prefers the volume controls on the video remote. Grand until you press the wrong button. I give up on heading for Venus and go in and grab a couple of remote controls to find UTV.
I've just spent my Bank Holiday Monday with my head in a larder cabinet. I started it on Easter Saturday, which God proceeded to punish me for by making absolutely everything that could go wrong... well.... go wrong. Dowels miraculously became unattached. Cabinet sides flopped apart and fixings pulled themselves and large sections of chipboard asunder. I cursed like Job in the worst of his scabbiness. Finally, I gave up in the hope of having a better head for the work another day. It didn't happen that way. Instead, though I fixed the problems that arose on Friday, the new iron mongery of the gizzard of the larder itself -- imported especially from England and delivered at 9.00 am on Saturday morning by two burly, good humoured bald men, one of whom declared that I was not the WillieW he had one time worked with -- proved a hazard to my mental health. If a bracket could go on upside down, I put it on upside down. If a runner could be inside out, it was inside out. And if a screw could avoid the head of a screwdriver and fall into the guts of the galvanised machine works it did. But I persevered. The work should take two hours, not two days, but it's done. Tomorrow I shall add doors (also ordered from England), go on the bus for door handles, then leave the kitchen project for a while until our money reserves are built up a bit to buy more parts.
I have to say it's starting to look like a modern kitchen now, and not just a haphazard DIY project.
Interestingly, the CD is now playing "Bed of Nails" by Alice Cooper. I ain't that far gone just yet, thanks.

Checklist for building a kitchen cupboard

Go to work. Check.
Go to meeting. Check.
Leave work at 12.30pm. Check.
Visit Veterinary Surgery before 1.00pm. Check.
Wait for bus. Check.
Listen to Thump! as arse hits ground having actually frozen off. Check.
Get home late because of bloody buses. Check.
Visit blogs on PC. Check.
Make tea. Check.
Drink tea and eat slice rhubarb pie. Check.
Chase ginger cat out of garden with broom. Check.
Spend 15 minutes in bathroom. Check.
Say Hello to cat in bedroom. Check.
Change out of work clothes. Check.
Bang head on staircase looking for boots. Check.
Open flatpack and follow instructions. Check.

Easy.

My first text message sent from inside a cupboard

Isn't that anti-perspirant a total model for having an Irish origin? I mean "Sure it won't let you down" is such a local motto... Anyway, Christy Moore is a high desert Andean mummy in comparison to me when I start doing any kind of physical labour, and so it was in the kind of frame of mind where my clothing had become so uncomfortable that nudity was about to take place that, two hours into adding another flat-packed kitchen cabinet in our never-ending project, last Monday, I received my first text message while standing on a chair inside a cupboard.

"How's it going?" Herself asks.

Well, I'm about to startle the neighbours and lose little pozidrive screws in the folds of my bare, fat, sodden flesh, I wanted to reply, but instead I waxed slightly lyrical about the quality of the box I was putting around our fridge and how much she would like it when she came home. My own opinion of it is not so settled. It is a little off square. B&Q have a device for curing this by adding two steel braces to the rear, but they (unnecessarily) point out that one should be careful not to obstruct the actual fridge by installing them. So I have one brace above the level of the fridge and one out of sight in another room entirely, doing nothing but, I suppose, gathering dust.

I have also acquired the habit of slamming the cupboard door. I may later add those clever little hinge things which connect the door of the fridge to the door of the cupbaord, but for now one opens one wooden door then opens the fridge. On removal of two (count them, it is getitng late after all) tins of lager, one closes the fridge firmly then applies the same amount of pressure -- in this case unnecessary -- to the cupboard door. The resulting BANG! noise has made me almost swallow my own tongue standing in the darkened kitchen over the past few evenings.

My excuse for not doing the other side of the kitchen is now removed. I shall have to learn the arts of not being flooded and not being electrocuted. Love it.