Is it time for that second freezer?
IN Daveyland preparations to bunker down for the winter were already well under way before PM Boris’s dour announcement set a sombre tone for the chilly months ahead.
My wife, a more efficient soul and nowhere near as lazy as me, has led the horticultural cavalry charge over the past days hacking down swathes of the front garden in preparation for its annual hibernation.
There was scarcely a moment during the hours of daylight when she was not seen clutching pruning shears, pole cutters, branch loppers, lawnmowers, strimmers and other weapons of mass foliage destruction.
Across the way the veg garden has also given up the ghost for the year after a fabulous spring and summer of growth and surplus produce, some of which is stored away in the freezer to be ceremoniously trotted out to table over whatever might pass for a family Christmas meal this year.
Of course the thought of anything festive is rather too much to contemplate right now with all these bad Covid vibes around but the situation did get us pondering whether we should be a bit better prepared for the next long haul than we were when the first virus-inspired tranche of food sourcing problems hit us back in Spring.
Do we buy an additional freezer? Not a monstrous one, just something cold and exceedingly compact to provide back up and extra storage of domestic essentials such as Magnum ice creams and Gregg’s bakeat-home sausage rolls.
The decision rests upon a singular domestic dilemma: Where would we put it?
My current idea is to locate it upstairs. Not in a bedroom but in the loft room, accessed by a sliding ladder. I have found a freezer which I believe fits the bill perfectly – but will it fit through the actual loft space?
I have measured and re-measured and believe it will. So I’m on the brink of taking the plunge and buying one. My only hesitation is how exactly I hoist it up there. If it turns out to be too large I have a great fallback excuse as I have just been told I need an eye test and can blame any mismeasurement on that.
Anyway, lifting the thing up the stairs would definitely be a two-person task and I am pretty certain Mrs Davey will not be participating in this difficult manoeuvre.
She has currently hurt her back and can only gain any comfort if she’s lying flat or standing up. It appears the injury was caused by over-reaching herself using a tree branch-lopper during that gardening frenzy. Does anyone know if you can comfortably sleep in the same bedroom as a freezer?
» BY the time you read this we will have both been vaccinated against the virus. The flu one.
The quirky thing about this annual procedure is that our GP surgery offered a choice of venues. One was the local Scout hut. The other a neighbouring village community hall.
I chose the latter destination on the grounds that many decades ago I was expelled from the Cubs for bad behaviour (it involved an apple core, an open window and Akela’s hat) and it still feels wrong to return to the fold even at this late stage.
Which brings me to the other intriguing aspect of receiving this essential winter jab. Our appointments are precisely timed, one at 11.54am and the other at 11.57am. Now that’s what I call mightily impressive scheduling. I shall try very hard not to be a minute late.
» AND, finally, am I alone in being baffled by the way Government works. On Monday the PM and his scientific advisors delivered some seriously heavyweight messages about the rapid daily onset of another nationwide Covid surge. Their warnings were dire. Cases were accelerating rapidly. Tough new restrictions were needed.
So why do they wait until Wednesday to implement it?