Fridge-Thawing and Chasing Cats

I spent most of Saturday morning de-frosting the fridge/freezer. I had turned the thing off on Friday night, because the third of the drawers I had ordered from Candy was delivered by Parcel Force on Friday morning. I cleared out the old drawers and had to bin a lot of stuff that wasn't worth keeping and the rest I put in a plastic box and took next door because Shelley and Garry allowed me to put it in their freezer until mine was ready for me to replace it in the cleaned-out and defrosted fridge/freezer. I should have left the fridge/freezer door open because it didn't defrost as quickly as I'd imagined, so early on Saturday I left it open and it seemed to thaw relatively quickly. I had put an old towel on the floor to try and absorb as much of the melt water as possible and it soon became like a tidal wave had hit and it ran all over the floor and under the table. I knew it would be a mess but I had to cope with it until the whole fridge/freezer was clear of ice. It was the fact that there was so much ice that caused the problem with the drawers breaking in the first place, so much that it was difficult to slide them out. The old broken drawers can be taken to the tidy-tip in Bleak Hall late next week, along with lots of other refuse, the packaging from the Panasonic microwave and quite  few other bits ad pieces which are hanging around the house. It isn't worth going until at least Thursday, because it's likely to be very busy, because people seem to use a Bank Holiday as an excuse to do clearing-out of their attic, garage or wherever they have unwanted stuff stored. The BBC1 programme, 'Money For Nothing' is based on the fact that people throw out old bits of furniture, either because they want to up-grade it, they inherit it from relatives or parents, it's not fashionable or else it's past it's best, broken and probably past repair. Sarah Moore, one of the designers who fronts this show, along with Jay Blades, takes these items away before they hit the skips (having got special permission to do this because you're not allowed to remove items from a tidy-tip otherwise.) and these pieces of furniture is restored and 're-purposed.' It's quite amazing to see what becomes of these pieces of furniture, sometimes transformed into bright, funky and quite striking pieces.

By mid-morning the ice had cleared from the fridge/freezer. I cleaned the shelves in the fridge section, taking them all out and wiping them as well as the shelves in the door. I was then able to turn the thing on again at the electric wall socket and it gradually started to freeze up, but not as much as it did before and producing too much ice. I think it will be more efficient, not having to work as hard and it doesn't seem to make quite as much as it did before and not producing a lot of melt water which gathered in a pool on the floor of the fridge section and trickling out onto the kitchen floor. So, around 10.30 the job was completed, and I wiped the outside of the whole unit along with the rubber seals in the door which had got very dirty. Job well and truly completed and the floor mopped and cleaned. I just have to make sure that it doesn't get as iced-up so that the drawers get broken again.

(Sunday) I had intended going out later than usual to take Alfie for his routine walk around Eaglestone Park. We got down to the area of grass where I usually let Alfie off his lead, but there was a black sat sitting in front of one of the houses within the park. Alfie wasn't slow in discovering it and the cat must have wondered what on earth had stuck it, because it shot off into the wooded area with Alfie in hot pursuit. I shouted at Alfie, but he wasn't going to come back immediately. I was concerned that the cat would run out and onto a road and that, if Alfie followed, he was likely to get run over by a car. But, having run after him and shouting loudly, he did eventually come back and I decided it would be best to put his lead on because I didn't want him running away, but usually he does come back to me, but knowing how he reacts to cats, I wasn't going to find out the difficult way.