That’s what it’s called on the rota …… if only! First day was Friday and
woke to find the milk in the fridge was warm and the freezer box had
defrosted itself dripping water over everything in the fridge. No time to
investigate what’s wrong yet because I promised to take the middle child
to school and see her head of year. Back from school 1 in time to go to
school 2! We’d had a letter from the school that a school nurse would
be measuring, weighing etc the children that day. Essy and I both think
that there is far too much information gathering and data held on people
in the UK. Our son is registered with a GP, has had a ‘well boy’ check
within the last 6 months, and if there were any signs of a problem we’d
take him to his doctor. Why does another computer need to duplicate
what his GP knows? So, off to his school I went and asked to see the
school nurse. I said that we’d prefer our son not to have this data
measured and recorded. She asked me why and I explained. She
nodded and then said “To be absolutely honest, I withdrew my son from
it as well”!
Next my mother, who is in her 90’s, had asked me to take her to the
opticians. I dread such requests from my mother but of course they
must be done. As I left home the words of Captain Oates came into my
head “I am just going outside and may be some time.” We left her
cottage several times and had to go back before we got to the car, I
didn’t get my purse, where’s my bag …… etc. Then I get the moaning
and groaning about my car – a Land Rover Discovery. I know it’s a high
a vehicle and if you’re old and short difficult to climb into but I bring a
caravan step for her. Therefore it’s one step up on the caravan step,
second step onto the side runner and last into the vehicle. Not really
that difficult but it takes about 10 minutes. Everything continued in this
vein and I finally got home late afternoon. OK time to check what’s up
with the fridge. It’s an integrated fridge so first it needed removing. It
didn’t take long to decide that it had died of old age so I needed to make
a distress purchase of one integrated fridge. End of the first day of rest!
Saturday morning and it’s off to John Lewis in Southampton where to my
surprise they only have two integrated fridges on display and neither of
these are stocked. Delivery around 5 working days which actually
means you wont see it until perhaps a week later. Then I remembered
that Ikea had opened nearby so it was worth a shot. Yes, they do sell
appliances and, yes, they had just what I wanted in stock and, yes, it
only took about 2 minutes to order it and receive a printed slip to
produce at the checkouts. After that downhill all the way. The place is
massive and it must have been just plain old good luck that I stumbled
upon the kitchen department so quickly. I followed the signs for
‘Checkouts’ and just kept walking and walking and walking. The place
has no windows so it’s very easy to lose orientation, at last I realised
that I was walking a very circuitous route around the store so that I’d see
everything! Finally, got out only to find that I needed to be on a lower
floor. And so the slow circuitous route following the ‘Checkout’ signs
began again. I was beginning to get very frustrated so asked an Ikea
employee (they are a rare sight on the shop floor) how much longer it
would be before I could hand over money to them – they showed me a
short cut down to the next and final floor, but it had still taken nearly 20
minutes of walking over 3 floors to get to a checkout. I’d taken the bus
into Southampton so next needed to go home and collect the Discovery
in order to collect the fridge. Did all this and got to the point at which
they notified me that there was a computer problem and the computer
controlled the crane which automatically found and retrieved things like
fridges ….. it may take an hour! They gave me a free ‘Have a coffee on
us’ token. I took this to a their Hot Dog stall where standard hot dogs
are 45p each and large hot dogs 93p each. So lunch was a large hot
dog and a free coffee. Finally got the thing home but only had time to
unpack it and plug it in, loosely slotted into its place. At least things
were now able to be kept cold.
It’s now the start of my third day of rest and after posting this I’ve got the
task of trying to remove the integrated door from the old fridge and then
fit it to the new one before completing the install. Then a trip to the
dump with the old fridge and a visit to Mother again because it’s
Mother’s Day. Will I get to rest tomorrow?
PS The lad has just said “Sorry, Dad. The light switch pull cord in the bathroom just came away in my hand” Of course it broke with the light on so that’s another little job which needs fitting into today.
