Fridge Family Casey

Fridge Family Casey ©

By

Michael Casey

　

Our fridge died on us. My wife had been nagging for ages about our fridge, finally I gave in. I agreed we needed a new fridge, and we could afford it.

So I started looking on the Internet to see where are the bargains were. Argos, Currys, Comet, John Lewis, these were the target sites, not to mention loads of others the google search gave us. But with something like a fridge, or rather a Frost Free Fridge Freezer, you really have to go to the shops and look at the offers.

So Sunday was Family Fridge Day. It began with my wife and girls going to their church, with a promise of a visit to Costco afterwards. I hadn’t decided which of my 3 churches to go to, it all depends on how tired or lazy I am, that’s why I’m here there and everywhere, so I have 3 priests praying for me. My wife and the girls go to the C of E while I stick with the Catholics. I forced myself to go to my local church around the corner, this is where our Topol look alike priest sings to us. Don’t take my word, go and attend.

My wife was surprised when she returned that I’d been out to Mass, and why had she returned instead of directly going to Costco, the simple reason, what did I have in my pocket? My wallet. So off the family went to Costco.

I like Costco because you can have a beef hotdog and a soda, with soda refill for only £1.50, yes really. While we were there we spotted a fridge freezer, so we had a look, trying all the doors and so on. There was one problem, we have a galley kitchen so we had to think, would the door open fully, if it couldn’t then we

couldn‘t buy it. We bought our stuff from Costco and I enjoyed the hotdog.

Next we were off to Wing Wip, he’s a major Chinese food hypermarket, several of my wife’s friends work there, Mr Ying Yip himself, one of the brothers waved us bye bye as we left the store. I’m told "byebye" is originally a Chinese word.

Afterwards we went to Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak, which is a student area, next to Birmingham University. There my wife met more or her friends who happened to be shopping.

So the next port of call was over the dangerous road behind Sainsbury’s that’s where Comet and Currys and Homebase are.

We looked up and down the aisles we had a good play with the fridges. Ma, my mother-in-law in Shanghai had admonished us to get a big fridge because the kids were growing and would want more food very soon. There was a nice big Indesit a silver colour, immediately we agreed on that. But we still needed to look in the shop next door. So that’s what we did, in the next shop my wife eyed a very big Bosch which blew the budget out of the water. So we looked at it and pulled and pushed all the drawers and doors open and closed. Then we went to Homebase but they don’t have fridges in the shop, only online.

The final problem was the lack of space in our galley kitchen, really we needed a tape measure to measure from the back of the fridge to the door wide open position. So we thought we’d come back the next day with our measurements and compare to what was in the shop. These are the things the Shanghai Family Casey have to do out of love and madness. I suppose we are like the Adams Family when we hit the shops.

Safely back home we decided to take our measurements down, once we had these we were half way home. But I don’t know about you but wouldn’t it be easier to just do it online? So armed with the 55cm measurement we went searching online. Hey presto we found an Indesit Frost Free Fridge Freezer that matched our 55cm figure. To be honest it was the very same fridge I had suggested a couple of days before, only I’d been overruled, which meant the Adams Family had to go playing hide and seek while we looked for a fridge.

Family meeting was held and our two girls looked at the Dixon’s offer. Yes that was the one. I hit return and bought the fridge freezer, frost free too. That was Sunday, though it felt not like a Sunday more like a Bank Holiday, a family day out while we looked at fridges.

Today Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, the lads rung us up early and said they’d be with us in 10 minutes. Then hey presto they appeared with the new frost free fridge freezer, our Indesit. They stripped all the packaging away in the street and they carried in the new fridge,

a bit like undertakers, but carrying in instead of out. They did carry away our old fridge, and in a matter of 10 mins we had a new addition to the family.

Our girls could not wait to try out the new super freezer, so after 4 hours, which is the wait time before you can switch on a new freezer, I was told this, I didn’t know this. So once it was ready me and the girls made up some blackcurrant squash and poured it into the 24 ice cube slots. They were impatient to see the results of their experiment, several times they opened and closed the fast freezer box. Finally all was revealed, we had cracked it, we had flavoured ice cubes!

The girls say they have lots to grow now, as they measure their height against the fridge. Doesn’t everybody’s kids, or is it in this Shanghai Casey’s family only? The new fridge is 1.74 metres, or up to my eyebrows so IF the girls grow that tall then they will be Models, they are pretty enough already, the wife could have been a model too, only she wasn’t tall enough, and turned down a chance to be a model for childs’ clothes in Shanghai.

How she married me is another story, I think it was my ability to chose fridges that swung it for me.