Travel Tips

Refer to Fridge Society Historian, Trillian2005 for a current list of members of the Fridge Society, VT's coolest sub-group. And an attractive recipe for coloured ice cubes.

Latest News: I have a new fridge-freezer. Yes, a brand new one!! The fridge section is so large it could house a small family of eskimos for a week. The freezer section is so much more practical and shows not the slightest hint of even thinking about frosting up. The downside is I became violently sick after trying to salvage de-frosted food from the old rust bucket. Urgh, there's a lesson to learn there!!

Please note that the 'slug' on the freezer door is not real, in fact it is made of wood. A sort of scare-slug. It keeps the pantry free of real slugs, who instead have moved to the kitchen where they plot someday to take over the Earth from behind my bread bin.

My old cream coloured fridge-freezer only needed defrosting every month. The light switch stuck and has to operated by hand. It had character. I can proudly say I had never spent more than 110 GBP on one of these essential household appliances. In this way I had kept my local second-hand refridgerator shop in business, reduced the UK Fridge Mountain by one, single handedly depleted the ozone layer and doubled my quarterly electricity bill.

F**k was I glad to see the back of the ugly monstrosity!!

A snapshot of my fridge contents frozen in time, in fact 11th April 2006. As for the freezer section, well, it was not advisable to go there without an ice pick. The list below is not intended for a psychological profile unless, of course, it indicates I am a cool, fun, exciting, intelligent, witty and sexy human being, in which case it is entirely accurate.

Loaf of wholemeal bread; 2 bottles of beer; 2 litres of semi-skimmed milk; 350g of mature Cheddar cheese; half used pot of cottage cheese; large pot of natural yoghurt; 250g Flora margerine; half a pack of lard; 5 free-range eggs; large carton of orange juice; small bottle of lemon juice; mayonnaise; half-used tin cans of tomatoes, baked beans, spinach; large jar of pitted black olives; tube of tomato puree; large tub of tahini; jar of freshly minced ginger; jar of minced garlic; jar of tikka-masala curry sauce; jar of red-hot chillies in vinegar; jar of homemade greengage jam; half a bar of creamed coconut; one iceberg lettuce; one bunch of celery...

My modest local white goods shop shows that wit is not entirely dead in the neighbourhood. Though I'm not sure how well the joke will travel, outside of the UK!

The Welsh for 'refrigerator' is oergell. And 'freezer' is rhewgell.

Pronounciation is important because rhew means 'ice' and rhiw means 'sex'. So be careful what you order in a North Wales pub!

Fridge Society member haiamisa got me investigating further. oer means 'cold' or 'chilly' but also 'frigid', which is almost like 'fridge, and almost the opposite of 'sex'!!