Alien encounters
A bit late and a bit short this week.
Last night was a leaving do for one of my staff and after a few drinks the tequila shots started arriving - normally my cue for a hasty exit, but you kind of have to join in a bit and I escaped after 2 of them, one of which was some pink, tequila based concoction that resembled Gaviscon. That meant any attempt to write this last night would have resulted in gibberish (even more so than usual).
This morning, with it being Little Ray of Sunshine’s second birthday next week, we went for brunch with the family and I only just got to writing now. I’m not sure anyone will have noticed the absence!
You might remember that last week our fridge was impersonating a Space-ex Falcon heavy just before lift off. Having thought the noise was a temporary fault, as it had subsided, it came back - worse if anything. It was like having a petrol lawnmower running in the kitchen - not terribly conducive to relaxing meals!
Oh and the kitchen sink has a leak. Mrs A discovered this whilst I was at work on Monday and phoned me to tell me about this and the fridge noise, which was driving her batty. The call happened to come during a board meeting and, as is our unwritten rule, you are allowed to take a quick call from your spouse in case it is an emergency. This was much to the amusement of my colleagues, who knew I would be spending my evening sorting out domestic appliances.
So when I got home, I set to work - watching you tube videos to figure out how to dismantle the fridge and fix the sink.
My hypothesis (as I mentioned last week) was that the problem was ice, not any permanent failure.
Some years ago I had bought a steam cleaner, which, as it turns out (you can learn anything on youtube) is the weapon of choice for refrigerator repairmen the world over.
I couldn’t even remember for sure if I had ditched it in one of our rounds of decluttering, but fortunately not - it was buried deep in the recesses of the cellar, near the old coal chute.
I hauled it out and fired it up - it still worked - hurrah!
My first problem was I couldn’t get at the screws securing the back panel, as they were caked in ice - the steam cleaner worked it’s magic, and melted the ice. This did result in the kitchen resembling tha scene in Close Encounters of the fourth kind - the fridge lights shining through a cloud of mist. I half expected some bog eyed alien to emerge and start complaining I’d smoked ‘em out.
I never did manage to get the panel off (possibly also due to ice), but after steaming all the ice I could see (and in all the gaps near the back for good measure), the fridge temperature had risen to 18 degrees C and the noise had ceased. It’s been pretty silent for the week since - I’m going to call that a win!
The sink is proving to be a more tricky problem and whilst I’ve reduced the leak, it still persists slightly so I’ve gone the bucket route. I’m pretty happy tackling most DIY jobs, but plumbing is one area I shy away from - water can make a lot of mess very quckly, so it looks like I’ll need a plumber.
That said we once had a plumber come to fix a stop cock and the silly sod unscrewed it without turning off at the mains stopcock at the street, resulting in mains pressure water spraying all over the kitchen. Within seconds there was an inch of water all over the kithchen floor and a lot of cleaning up to do. I won’t be calling him again. The only consolation to this whole sorry episode was that he got very, very, very wet.
That’s it for this week.
Have a good ‘un,
Jerry