Slender Blender

When TCMT worked in furniture retail I have to confess that occasional bargains came our way having been returned by dissatisfied customers when the product was really OK. I am sitting on a fine leather sofa as I type (heavily discounted) and am looking at a set of dining room chairs which came out at about £9 each. We have fourteen of them. A dear, late-lamented member of this parish once broke one and, trying to be kind, got a quote for £90 to fix it. We passed.

TCMT has moved to a kitchenware outlet. We'll preserve its modesty and call it Pond Country. She has to wear an outfit that can best be described as Dolly Parton's away strip.

Now I am the proud owner of all sorts of devices I had learned to do without by failing to be aware of their existence. Garlic skinner. Herb stripper. Perforated cling-film. An unsqueezable mop. I own these things. They are not all entirely without merit.

But. But. But. The deal with the returned items at the new employer is this. Refunded mail order products are sold by enveloped bid to staff and the money goes to charity (cool).

One such product was a Vitamix. This is the DeLorean of blenders. If there are moments in your day when your ornaments move along the shelf of their own volition and then something drowns out the local airport then maybe your neighbour has one.

Being a bit cheeky as the product costs £500 - a moment's silence while we note that there are people who pay this much for a thing that makes food smaller - we agreed to bid £80. We now own a Vitamix.

This baby turns fruit and ice cubes into sorbet. My stale bread has never been so quickly crumbed. On full power I swear it would make you a smoothie out of avocado stones, mango cores and paving slab without breaking sweat. And when you've finished? Fill it with warm water and a dash of washing up liquid and it cleans its own crevices. It comes with a plastic rod to push stuff down if the blades are not engaging but it is designed so that it is impossible to blend that. And I tried.

Jesus clearly hadn't anticipated the existence of the Vitamix when he said it was difficult to get a camel through the eye of a needle.

There is a 'pulse' button. I haven't needed it yet but if you are an amateur seismographer you'll probably know when I do.

I think I am in love with a piece of kitchenware. But I do miss my mop.

On Trust #RAGGS

One of the things that, it seems to me, makes the world a worse place, is not trusting people quickly enough. Of course if you trust 100 people you will get burned once or twice, but if you trust no-one you will end up living an isolated, hate-filled life staring out of the window looking for burglars.

My trust has been abused a few times. But let me tell you a lovely story of how trusting people can be good.

On Monday evening the dishwasher broke. Specifically, the start button broke. Everything else worked.

First thing Tuesday morning I texted the mobile of a dishwasher engineer who once visited. By the time I read her reply I was at Gloucester Services on the M5 north, on the way to visiting my Mum. The reply said:

'Amazing. I am in your road now. Will call at 11.00-11.30.'

To which I replied 'Aaaagh!' followed by the more considered, 'Can you ask my neighbours for a key? I will text them.'

At 11.00 I received another text. 'Neighbours are out. Will go and do a call in Portishead then return. I have your Laithwaite's wine delivery.'

At 12.30 my neighbour's daughter, unaware of the text exchange, and after checking with her Mum and noting down the van registration, let the engineer in.

I received a text later from engineer saying, 'Have left you a note in kitchen.'

Returning home the note said that the dishwasher needed a new part but a temporary fix had been done. There was a bank account number to transfer the money (or I could pay the whole bill when the part arrived ). The wine delivery was on the side.

Thanks to Laithwaites, for trusting another person in a white van.

Thanks to Roni, the engineer, for a great job.

Thanks to my neighbours for checking then trusting.

Not everyone will feel comfortable letting their neighbours have keys to their house or letting engineers they have only met once be in their house alone. But those people would be doing the Christmas washing up by hand despite owning a labour-saving device.

And yes I know this is a middle-class example and not everyone has dishwashers but you do the application. I trust you.

#RAGGS = Random Acts of Good or Great Service

Crashing

With a crashing sense of irony, or make that an ironic sense of crashing, the arrival of the Japanese boy seems to have coincided with everything breaking. They come in threes these things - car indicator, computer and (get this) the beer fridge. All knacked; same day.

So, if you want something try calling or texting. I will only be doing emails about once a day. Thankfully I have a very nice Fujitsu laptop in the house and the PC Doctor is coming for lunch on Sunday.

The last thing my computer did before its final demise was to help the PC Doctor by searching for curry houses in Dumfries. At which point crashing irony rolled out its bed-mat and decided to stay for a few weeks.

Arcade Fun

As the weather gets warmer various food substances which have spent the last few months happily residing in cupboards suddenly demand to go in the fridge. Demand, that is, in the sense that you have to eat round the mould if you don't chill them. I was made to do this as a child and still gladly do but others seem fussier. My younger son, who worked in a restaurant for a time, used to spend hours throwing things away that were beyond their alleged use-by date although I found smelling and tasting a much better guide than date stamps.

But the top shelf of the fridge is now full. Jams and marmalades have been added to the selection of pickles and pastes that normally reside there. If you push a jar of pickle onto the shelf another jar will invariably fall to the floor, a bit like a combination of those seaside arcade games - where you had to roll a coin into a pusher to get a stack of coins to fall over an edge and be your prize - and slip-fielding practice.

Well this lunchtime I rolled in the piccalilli and won a jar of anchovies. Then I put back in the anchovies (you always reinvest your winnings in these games, it's the rules) and got cranberry sauce. Just now I checked the jar for the spelling of piccalilli and won some horseradish.

Hours of fun.

Design Fault

It's an annual event. We have a combi oven which is a microwave and grill. We use it for toast most mornings. Two minutes each side is about right and uses the same energy as a toaster and less than a gas grill once you take into account warming up.

You set the dial to two minutes and press grill then shut the door.

You press grill.

Once a year I press microwave. After about 45 seconds the kitchen is filled with the smoke from toast cooking from the inside and the rubber supports of the grill mesh also being microwaved.

I have a design fault. At this time of year I should have a reading on my forehead saying 'Full.' Any further piece of information inserted into me causes one other one to fall out the other side. Stop imagining quite how or where that happens, it's not edifying.

Forgive me

Long standing readers will be aware that sometimes I post because I genuinely have something to say, sometimes when I have something to point out or a link to refer you to and sometimes, like now, when I am finding it hard to get going on something else.

I am not particularly behind in my work but there are things which, if not achieved today, will make the rest of the week harder. Nevertheless...

I cannot go out and visit for I have a fixed time in which the washing-machine repair man (it is a man, I've met him, his name is Alan) will visit to tell me what an AEG error report C9 means. I imagine it means £50 -£100 but that is simply a wild guess. Currently it means that last night's washing remains unspun.

The experience of the four new events in the last three weeks was good but yesterday morning felt a bit like a post-mountaintop experience. I had a ticket to a gig last night but my companion was taken ill so I went alone and the band (Maps) were disappointing. Today I just feel sort of grey, as does the weather.

Domestic Appliance Report

1. Purchased new iron. No power trip. Ironing done. Old iron will be returned to Leamington Spa where it made gurgling noises without blowing fuses.

2. DAB aerial just about working but reception here seems poor generally. Stations however are now permanently tuned in.

3. Someone has locked the TV tuning system and we have no manual for this TV so video, as yet, untuned to TV.

4. New fridge freezer decided to go on the blink necessitating emptying it and cooking a lot of things (pea soup, stewed apple, bread with everything). Only freezer is affected. Fridge fine. Problem persisted all weekend as the Siemens service centre is strictly 9-5 Monday to Friday. Problem righted itself once I'd phoned this morning at 9.30 and arranged for an engineer to call.

4. New BT handset says it is January 5th. Followed instructions to change time and date and the menu replied 'not available.'

I think we have accidentally moved into an area of RVAF (Random Variable Appliance Fatigue) turbulance.

Cheese

There's a cheesy smell in the kitchen. Not a tangy dolcellate or ripe camembert. This one is the sweet smell of milk on the turn. A u-turn. Can't quite identify where it is coming from but over the last few days we have cleaned and disinfected the kitchen bin, mopped the floor, cleaned the fridge and generally checked everywhere.

During the course of this we threw out a pack of mouldy, mild cheddar purchased by a lodger. Ownership of mild cheddar should be a capital offence anyway but the smell persisted. It also continued after the removal of two tupperware boxes, one with mouldy baked beans in it, the other containing a life-form based on spaghetti hoops.

We, like many households, have a rule that the contents of all half-consumed tins of food should be placed in tupperware containers in the fridge for a week before being thrown out. These two had survived over a fortnight.

Removal of such items encouraged us no end that we might have pinned down the source of the smell and indeed that false positive continued last night. On reflection it was because the temperature was down. Today the pong was back and it was back with a vengeance. I was left with no choice since viewers were coming to look at the house later. I had to go (cue sinister music) behind the fridge.

Pulling the fridge out one inch from the wall made it obvious to me that I was going in the right direction. Please God not dead rodent. Please

I don't know how to offer you a word-smell of the thick, goey liquid I discovered in the fridge condenser trap. If you used your toe-nail contents after a marathon to make yoghurt it would come as close as I dare to a description. I have chucked it away. I have cleaned the condenser box. I have disinfected the box. I have cleaned the floor around it. I have disinfected the sink I cleaned the trap in. I have disinfected me with an anti-bacterial enthusiasm not seen since I last had surgery.

The smell has gone. The memory lingers.

Cold Day 12

On Wednesday 15th December (Diary of a cold, day 12) coughing started to feel vaguely satisfying. Good news, said Richard, it means your body is working. If the cough is making you expectorate it is doing what coughs ought to do which means your body is still working. I expectorate in your general direction mate.

I did manage to hit my writing deadine in the midst of all this and provided Scripure Union with some all-age material for next Advent. Also did a bit of Christmas shopping, walked Fred twice a day and managed to be in for both cooker and washing machine repair people (£100 plus each one, they love Christmas my domestic appliances).

Yesterday, still coughing and using paper tissues, I went to two carol services and two parties. In the first service I was on young-person control duty in the balcony. Managed to avoid flinging any of them over the side.

Helo, what's your name?
Alex
Where do you come from?
The balcony

In the first party (neighbour's 60th birthday) I was told I was a trendy vicar, not for the first time in my life, but are the clergy really so old now that a nearly 50 year old is trendy. God help us all.

After two weeks of being alone with a virus I found the crowds very scary. I kept telling people this and they didn't believe me but that is the problem for one so steeped in sarcasm. When you tell the truth they think it is a gag. Resolve to tell the truth with a smile on my face for the next few months.

Today cold virus is on day 17 and I am still sniffling. When humankind is long gone this cold virus will still be around.

Someone gave me a £25 book token to 'Buy a conservative commentary on Jonah.'

Dishwashers

A runtime error has occurred
Do you wish to debug?
Line 70
...doesn't support this property or method

Click on 'no' and carry on. Doesn't seem to make any difference.

The answer to the Christmas newsletter (phone to subscribe; it's worth it say our regulars) quiz question, 'How many bits which fall off a dishwasher prove to have been unnecessary all along?' will never be known. At least not from here. Our experiment ended when Liz admitted she wasn't prepared to set the programme dial with a pair of pliers and listen for the clicks like an expert safe-cracker so she went out and bought a new one. RIP eleven year old Zanussi. You did more than we ever expected. Welcome Bosch. How come something that fits so snugly into the gap and looks so cool requires six instruction manuals and adenda and a phone call to Severn Trent Water to find out how hard my water is.

Excuse me but how hard is my water?
It'll take you any day you Leamington wuss. Did you spill my pint?

Memo to Conservative Central Office - don' t pay your wife for doing nothing; get her out doing a real job so that she makes a useful contribution to the household budget. I think we're going to hire a cleaner next so she can stay out even longer.