HYPERLOCAL HISTORY MONTH: My fridge
My fridge is four years old, having been installed just before lockdown as a replacement for a much older model. I accosted my landlord when he made his as-yet-only visit to my flat, pointing out that the 20 year-old fridge was inefficient, didn't have an internal light and the handle had broken. Well have a new one then, he said, and I wished I'd asked a decade earlier. The available width between existing fittings was only 55cm rather than the more usual 60cm so I was constrained to a limited selection including the eventual Zanussi.
Next I'd like to address the history of the items in my fridge. I should point out that I'm due a trip to Tesco tomorrow so it's rather emptier than usual, but that'll help keep the historical details more manageable.
• My fridge contains two 4 pint bottles of milk, one with a smidgeon of milk left. It hasn't gone off yet but it has a use-by date of 29 July which is why I went out yesterday and bought the other bottle (use by 9 August).
• The other items in the door are some low fat Cheddar and the remains of a cucumber my Dad gave me two weeks ago because it was surplus to requirements.
• Most of the other items in my fridge were purchased on Monday 22nd July, although their historical provenance goes back a lot further according to date of manufacture. These items include three potatoes, four apples, five-eighths of a loaf of bread, one-third of a chicken pie, six carrots and four Brussels sprouts.
• My fridge contains one bottle of Becks chilled ready for drinking. It comes from the very last pack of Becks I ever saw in my local supermarket and has a use-by date of December 2023 (so I probably ought to hurry up and drink it).
• At the back of my fridge is a 50cl bottle of Volvic. I would never spaff money buying bottled water so I assume this was a freebie, perhaps from the Olympics given its use-by date is 20-1-2014. I don't think I'd risk drinking it now.
• The oldest foodstuffs in my fridge are three 54g Mars bars with a use-by date of 18-02-07. They're branded 'Believe' and were issued in that heady summer of 2006 when England were absolutely definitely going to walk away with the World Cup, honest. I keep them as a totemic keepsake of misplaced optimism, also as a reminder that chocolate was bigger before shrinkflation.
I'll now turn to the provenance of the magnetic attachments on the front of my fridge.
• A broken fridge magnet in the shape of a tortoise purchased at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin on 11th March 2000.
• The code number to access the communal utilities cupboard in my block of flats (updated version). Slightly splashed.
• The business card of the lettings consultant who let the flat to me in August 2001, despite the fact he left the company two years later.
• A 'World's Best' magnet, given to me by a colleague who misguidedly assumed I was based on limited information.
• 23 magnetic letters of the alphabet (for car registration reasons). The remainder of my alphabets sit in an old margarine tub on top of the fridge.
• A tiny fliptop notebook with a single entry, a 1999 shopping list which says Food Shop | Bread Mix | Roux Mix (I think that's what the last one says but the Ex had awful handwriting).
n.b. my fridge is actually a fridge freezer but I'll save discussion of the subzero upper section for another day.