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The older I get, the more cynical I get. It is not a fact I am proud of, but it is a fact. I disbelieve just about everything the establishment and the media tell us. I am convinced that we are manipulated into being the submissive, law-abiding robots that we have become. It grieves me greatly.

Monday 13 July 2015

The Art of Reversing

This blog post is not about my driving.  I can drive and I can reverse park, it is just that most of the time I choose not to.  When I have to park, I find as many empty parking spaces together as I can and park there.  Sometimes I manage to get just into one space.

But today's reversing is brought to you by fridge doors.  The default for fridge doors is apparently to open on the left side.  In a world of political correctness and equality, I feel this is somewhat harsh and outdated, because in my kitchen, the fridge door needs to open on the right side.  Unlike my support of Novak Djokovic at yesterday's Wimbledon final, I cannot be alone in this.

My old, integrated fridge died.  I read somewhere, I think it was Twitter (therefore it must be true) that fridges and extremely hot weather do not go together well.  If this were true then countries with decent summers would not have refrigeration.  But the fridge was 10 years old this year and clearly decided enough was enough.  I googled its symptoms - the internet has made doctors and engineers of all of us.  Unlike googling a medical predicament, where a broken fingernail can be anything from a broken nail to multiple forms of life-threatening cancer, the internet was in agreement that the compressor had gone and it would be cheaper to buy a new fridge.

I decided not to have an integrated fridge again.  I spent hours and hours choosing a fridge.  I wanted a fridge with a door handle - not the weird dip at the top of the door, which is the cause of most broken fingernails in my experience.  I found exactly what I wanted in Currys.  It was the last one in stock, so I said I would take that one.

At 10 p.m. the evening before delivery, I realised that the plinth that went along the bottom of the kitchen units would have to be cut up to get the new fridge in.  To the undoubted joy of my neighbours, my tiny hacksaw and I got to work to make sure the fridge recess was plinth free.

The fridge was delivered on time and I opened the instructions - reversing the door looked like a piece of cake.  It was - a piece of cake you never ever want to be served again.  The left foot was damaged, so the door was resting on the screw, not the rubber surround and the screw holes on the other side of the base had all been filled in with polyfilla, which would not let me easily get a screw in.  The door was therefore held on by damaged foot, rather than by the hinge base.  As it was the last fridge of that kind, I arranged for collection and a refund, a bit miffed that Curry's helpline was 'unavailable' so I had to drive to the shop to do all this.

I then bought another fridge from John Lewis.  I normally buy everything from John Lewis but they hadn't had many fridges in stock and I like to see what I am buying, not just see a photo of it.  Perhaps I have trust issues and lack imagination, but it is fridge, it will hold my wine, gin and tonic, therefore I need to know it is right for the job.  The fridge was delivered at 6.55 a.m.  The door was reversed by 7.15.  I went to put the handle back on the right side of the door - but no.  This was not to be.  The screw holes were filled in with weird plastic plugs which, from the plastic around the screws when removed from the other side, I presumed I had to screw through, but screwing through them dislodged the plastic.  The screws then went in about halfway, the threads refusing to align sufficiently to allow the screws to fully go in.  I tried repeatedly, giving up at 8.40.

How hard can it be to attach a handle to a fridge door?  I was surrounded by screwdrivers, spanners and instruction manuals.  The most difficult part of reversing a door should not be replacing the handle.  This seems to be down to a ridiculous cost saving on Zanussi's part.  Rather than have screws already in the holes, they have plastic plugs, not mentioned at all in the manual.  The instructions for reversing the door are so poorly written I suspect E L James had a hand in it.

This prejudice against right-side opening fridges has to end.  Reversing the door should take 10 minutes, not a week of faffing with various types of fridges, otherwise it should be free.  I am not an expert at DIY, but I can get by.  I planed and rehung my own doors, so I am more than capable of reversing a fridge door.  I have reversed the door, I just can't put the handle on.  One handle, two screws, two screwholes - how can it go so very wrong?  So far John Lewis have been far more helpful and accommodating than Curry's helpline.  I do have a fridge, it does open the way I want it to and it will, in time, have a handle fitted to the door.  In the meantime I despair of the engineer or 'cost saving architect' who thought 'lets save a penny a fridge and have plastic plugs instead of screws'.

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