fridge

“You can never have enough refrigeration,” the bloke at the fridge and washer shop tells me.

     

When I return to my Croydon home from Bendigo last May I store Jeremy, my 212-litre fridge, in the carport. Mo is driving himself and girlfriend Katie round Australia, so leaves his great big bastard of a cooler in my kitchen. He borrows Jeremy when they return from their trip and shack up with his mother while house-hunting.

He and Katie move into a rental house in Carrum Downs last weekend. My first question is, “Where the fuck is Carrum Downs?” It’s five minutes off Eastlink inland of Seaford. We need to swap fridges so I pootle down in the Jazz and park in the drive. A work truck from the signage company Mo works for backs in behind me.

We wheel Jeremy out of a fairly barren kitchen and easily manhandle him onto the truck’s tray. Mo straps him in with truckie’s hitches and we belt up Eastlink back to Croydon. We need the crane to hoist the big fridge onto the tray in my sloping narrow driveway. Sid the miniature panther accompanies us back to Carrum Downs, yowling in a cage on the front seat.    

Back home I rearrange Jeremy. The things I want to keep cold barely fit and everything needs shuffling to get anything out. It’s soon apparent that Jeremy is not doing the job. The tiny freezer works but the fridge is only slightly less than room temperature. Jeremy is dying at only four years old.

Two days later the milk’s off, the ajvar is coated in mildew, the fungus on the tomatoes spectacular. I visit three large electrical emporia hunting for a silver, bottom-mount—freezer underneath instead of on top—fridge at a certain price, without success.

In desperation I visit the fridge and washer shop in a strip of six shops on Canterbury Road deep in the heart of residential Heathmont. Big Jeremy is just inside the door. They can deliver this very afternoon and they do.

BJ weighs in at 454 litres. That’s a lot of milk. Or beer and fish, as the showroom bloke suggests. I modify a shelf to fit him in, BJ not the showroom bloke, and fire him up. He gurgles like a baby while I head for the supermarket to purchase enough frozen goodies to keep him happy—puff pastry, prawns, and vanilla ice-cream.

He’s got lovely lines for a big bloke, nicely curved handles and glass shelves.

Marriage is a lottery: so is buying fridge, especially one that’s been round the block before. Little Jeremy lasted four years from brand spanking new off the showroom floor. I’ve got a feeling BJ and I will be chums for quite some time.

Rock on.