Oh, what a sad, sad day! My beloved fridge has passed on to that great appliance utopia in the sky. I like to picture it up there catching up with old washer and dryers and indeed all other former appliances that have been a part of our homes over the years.It was such a great fridge, perfectly set out with fridge compartment above and freezer below and so large and spacious inside that you felt almost petty for wishing that you could just fit one more thing in there, especially as it was already full to the brim.
Now, for many of you this sense of sadness and loss will seem odd and misplaced, but until you have found a perfect appliance or one that at least fulfills most of your expectations, it's hard to know how you'll feel when it's gone. Miss Twinset of course couldn't see anything other than the excitement and joy of a shopping trip looming ahead of her and although her passion for the kitchen and appliances is nowhere near as well developed as mine, the opportunity to trawl the aisles in search of the perfect deal was too good to resist! The only concern that the Other One had was that it didn't contain any of her booze, 'cos heaven knows she wouldn't be able to cope with a warm white wine!
The fridge didn't always belong to us. In fact, it was adopted when we moved into the house more than a decade ago. The previous owners had had the kitchen cupboards built around the fridge and were honest enough to admit that not only could they not fit it into their new house, but that our "regular" size fridge would look hopelessly out of place in the custom size gap. Although I was initially suspicious of the secondhand nature of the fridge, I soon came to appreciate it's understated beauty and the humble way it quietly went about doing the job for which it was intended. It was also a bit like Mary Poppin's carpet bag - seeming to have an unending amount of space and a capacity for producing the strangest things if you moved bottles around and peered into the back corners. It's funny, but after I took all the magnets off, it was as if I was disowning it somehow :-)
Of course, you can't just clean the outside, you need to empty the inside. It took up almost the whole kitchen counter and as you can see... I wasn't kidding about that magic carpet bag trick! Where did all this stuff come from? lol. I had to laugh at the Other One though... She spotted "the" bottle and was horrified when I told her that it was alcohol free. I thought she was having a stroke and she did turn the nicest shade of puce. 
Now, you may be wondering about the new fridge. Naturally, Miss Twinset was dying to go shopping with me, but in the end I simply told her it was a family outing and my parents and I set off with a checklist of preferred features and a list of measurements, filled with hope that we would be able to tick all the right boxes.I have to confess that I simply adore spending time in stores that sell appliances and kitchen gadgets. The alluring gleam of new glass and chrome, of sparkling surfaces on new fridges, freezers, washers and dryers. I find myself wandering the aisles caressing them gently, examining their buttons and gidgets and gadgets and dreaming of kitchens and houses that I have yet to own where I could house them all. Sigh. Ok.... I'm more than a little weird, but in fairness, you're only as good as your equipment (and no boys, that isn't a dig at you), so it's important to have the best that you can afford!
Well, we discovered that the average fridge is TINY and that the standard size is almost 16cm narrower than our old fridge! There were some other fridges that I simply desired with a passion, but they were 6cm too wide. Oh dear! I was feeling like Goldilocks. This one was too wide, this one too tall, this one too deep, would we find one one at all? In the end though, a selection was made!! Then it was just an interminable 2 day wait for it to be delivered on Saturday. 
The old fridge was taken away to start a new life as a charity donation and I bid it a slightly tearful farewell... sniff. It was like losing a friend, someone I had trusted to look after my ingredients and creations, someone who knew all the secrets of the disasters I'd hidden within or the chocolate that was always stashed in the crisper drawers instead of lettuce. It was time though. Besides, back in the kitchen, a shiny new fridge was waiting for us to get to know each other, filled with hidden compartments and funky features. The inside is vastly smaller than the old one, but I think that we can learn to work with it. Besides, it gives me a great excuse to tell the Other One that she isn't allowed to use it as a booze storage unit!
So... raise a glass to appliances no longer with us and to getting to know new friends :-) Let's hope that there are years of cooking and baking together in our future.
Until next time...
