An act of senseless violence against an entirely defenceless domestic appliance

Day 19

General status update

Hair: Very worried indeed, inasmuch as hair can be worried – the 2^nd chemo cycle starts on Wednesday. This could mean a rapid exit for the hair.

Nausea demon: Cheering up enormously as FEC 2 approaches; he is looking forward to being properly unleashed again.

Chemo Muse: Also very excited about the approach of the new chemo cycle, when her already awesome powers will be augmented by several whacking great doses of steroids, first intravenously, then by mouth – she JUST CAN’T WAIT.

Sleep, lack of: I took one of Satan’s Little Helper’s last night, so I’m not allowed to tonight, what with them being highly addictive, and everything. BUGGER.

Skin: I’d like a new one, please. And if you could make it one that tans easily and instantly at the first hint of sun, like my best friend Clare’s, that would be absolutely terrific. Then I can stop hating her - 30 years is a long time. Thanks so much.

Anxiety level (1-10): Ratcheting upupupupupupUP as FEC 2 looms.

State of mind: I cried over Linda Snell’s end of Xmas concert speech in the Archers tonight, which says it all, really, doesn’t it?

News from North Yorkshire: coming soon.

 

Not the actual fridge, which no longer exists, but a near-enough simalcrum..This pciture was stolen from the interweb. I am a Bad Person, as well as having a Bad Attitude, it seems.

 

I’ve always hated small fridges, but on a completely justified basis, so the level of psychological distress they have brought me over the years needs to be taken into account when considering this particular incident.

Further, it was a hot summer’s day, and given the short period of time which I had available to complete the defrosting of the teensy-tiny, completely frozen-up freezer compartment inside the doll’s size fridge, before its recently-evacuated contents defrosted, I would argue that it was entirely reasonable to attack it with a hammer. It was the ice I was attacking, not the fridge, and the extent of the collateral damage took even me by surprise, but I was under a great deal of stress at the time.

And it all ended well. Kind of.

One day in late August this year R, on a train back from Gatwick where he had been seeing someone off at the airport, was both alarmed and perplexed to receive a text from me which read ‘You must do as you see fit, but I am never going to have anything to do with that fridge again. NEVER.’

There was no line of xxxs appended to the text which, quite apart from the words, he recognised as a sign of clear and imminent danger of complete emotional meltdown on my part; he says it’s like when the birds all stop singing before a volcanic eruption or a tsunami.

R called me at once. Apparently (my recollection of this is not entirely clear, to be honest, but he says the words remain engraved on his brain) I informed him that I had broken off all relations with the fridge, which was just INTOLERABLE, and maybe now a little bit broken, also, and that in future, given that we could not afford a new fridge, I would just eat and drink things which did not need to be kept cold. He could do as he wished, but the fridge and I were OVER.

R said ‘But I thought you said it didn’t matter about the fridge, and that you could put up with it’.

‘I thought I could, but I can’t. I’m sorry, it’s just too much.’ I then burst into tears, and put the phone down.

R took a long time to get home, having nobly returned via John Lewis in Oxford St, where he ordered a new fridge. I think he may have also have spent some time wandering the streets trying to work out how to deal with the madwoman in his flat, laying waste to the white goods.

When he got finally got back to Gurkha Towers I was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, red-eyed, and still muttering furiously to myself about the fridge.

I had a wonderful fridge of my own, the Fridge of Fridges, my dream fridge, the tall  spacious self-defrosting fridge-freezer I HAD ALWAYS WANTED, back home in the Camel Barn; what was I doing living in a place with a dwarf-sized 15 year old fridge that was falling apart even before I started attacking its miniscule frozen-up ice compartment with a hammer?

How had my life COME TO THIS?

R sat down, gave me a hug and said, equably, ‘We could have just discussed this, you know. I agree, the fridge did need replacing, but you said you were fine with it for now, given that we’re a bit hard up for the foreseeable future.’

The financial cost of leaving our previous existences to make a life together has been very high for both of us; R and I are living in what they used to call (and maybe still do) ‘reduced circumstances’.

‘I was OK with it, I was,’ I replied, miserably ‘ But just now, when I was trying to clean it and it was all frozen up again, something snapped, and then - I just WASN’T.’

‘That would be when you started attacking it with the hammer, I expect’ said R, looking into the kitchen at the pools of melting ice and the shards of broken plastic that had once been the vegetable crisper.

He paused, and looked into my eyes: ‘Caroline, is there anything you’re not telling me, here? Is there anything else that’s bothering you, apart from the fridge.’

‘No, of course not.’ 

 

R waited, in silence. He’s very good at that ‘tripping up your interlocutor into revealing secrets simply by remaining silent for an extended period of time’ thing.

‘Well, it’s probably NOTHING AT ALL to worry about, but…’

I stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

‘What? Tell me, Caroline, what is it.’

I took a deep breath.

‘I’ve got a lump. I’ve got a lump IN MY BREAST.’

R put his arms around me again, and I buried my face in his chest and wept.

I think I knew, even then, denial or no denial, that this was not going to end well. On some level, I just KNEW.

R stroked my hair, and whispered to me: ‘I’m here, don’t worry, I’m here. And I will stay here. As you say, it’s probably nothing – but if there is something bad, I will be here. Whatever happens, I will be here, and I will look after you. I love you - even if you have just murdered my fridge’.

And then I laughed, and cried some more.

(I’ve just realised that my posts on this blog have related events very slightly out of chronological order – because it was, in fact, R who then insisted that I make an appointment to see the doctor, at the first available time)