Our fridge broke again. The coils at the back get covered in
ice and then it stops working, and every now and then we have to defrost it all
and start again. At first we thought it was over-colding itself because of the
humidity of summer. Now it’s happened in late October we think something’s
wrong with the temperature regulator-thing (none of us are particularly
technical). So after a confusing and crowded adventure in the local
supermarket, I came home to see my flatmate with his head in the freezer,
trying to speed up the defrosting process with a hairdryer. He’s still there
now. And my foods still in bags. I’m looking over my pre-hurricane stock
bemusedly while the white noise of the hairdryer makes me oddly calm. I’d never
been to a supermarket the day before a potential natural disaster before. It
didn’t occur to me how utterly mobbed it would be. It took me 20 minutes of
ducking through people and trolleys and small children just to hustle myself a
basket. Then there was the question of what to buy. Coming from England, where
no freak weather ever happens, I felt quite uninitiated into the process of
panic buying. I was worried, going round just picking up normal things like
cereal and yoghurt. ‘Fool!’ the cashier is going to think as I go to pay for my
goods, ‘she’s only buying regular food-items! Where’s her 6 kilo bag of oats,
where’s her month’s supply of crackers? What an amateur!’ I embarrassedly
presented my goods at the till, chucking in a pack of gum and some m&ms for
good measure, as people around me were clearing shelves of paper towels and
crisps as they passed them in the queue. I’m still worried I didn’t buy the last bag of bagels. Loads of
people had bagels. I’m missing out by not having bagels. I bet there’s
something that happens during a hurricane where bagels are really useful…
No comments:
Post a Comment