My Testicles .....

Yeppers. There they are. Shot on top of my freezer. Don't they make a little corner of ye mind spark up with the name Jeffery Dahmer ?

Horribly; Not so completely unrelated, either. Ask Dean O'.

See, those are actually ~ if not obviously ~ balls of minced beef. But don't they just look like ....? Anyway, I buy my POWs a pound or so of minced beef and then I stand there, chucking portions of it into little, maggie sized rations. These I then bag up, in twos, as shown. One each. A days feed for them both. And I put these bags in my freezer. Doing my level utmost to remember to take a bag out, last thing every night.

Why so? Because my brand new, bought in December, fucking fridge has gone tits up on me inside Five Months! Can ye believe that? Do Zanussi make fridges? If so, I'm fucking buying one! They truly do make some solid, dependable shit. Trouble is, I doubt if Zanussi would bother themselves with producing the little 'Table Top' fridges I like. I like them because they're small. I only need one to keep the days meat cool, as I defrost it. Or store the POW's mince in.

Craic is though, this latest damn fridge coughed, farted and died weeks ago. I've been bombed back to the fucking stone age here. Feeding my Dogs either deep frozen meat, or else meat that's lain submerged in the sink all day. My own meat just sits about in a plastic bag till dinner time. It's a disgusting way to have to carry on.

I rang the shop, of course. Eventually. Having first needed to find time to find the receipts. Dear little Indian sounding lady. Very sweet and meek. Ye couldn't get angry with that voice and manner. Not that I would have anyway. Not her fault she's retailed a fridge sold to Her with a weak thermostat. She said they'd send a Service Engineer out.

That surprised me. Because, when my earlier fridge died, after at least a few years of sterling service, I asked Dean O' if he could fix it. He explained that, no way; When a Thermostat fucks? It's fucked. Knowing what Dean O's capable of? If He can't fix it; It must be Unfixable.

And, I guess, that's what their Service Engineer must've told them too. That's why, when I rang again, a week later, they said they were getting me a new fridge. But, that the manufacturers were behind and that it might take ten days to get one.Ten days? It must have been at least fourteen days, more, since it fucked up. Even then I'd spent about a week putting meat in there. Checking the setting. Checking the meat.

Some days the meat was frozen. Some days it was rank. All on the same dial setting. Thermostat had developed a life of its own. And, I soon realised, when it had an Off day? The heat of the motor made it a Warm Box. Meat simply rotted in there.

And that's what I'd been telling Dean. That evening as we stood there, in my kitchen, enjoying a quiet pint together. Both contemplating this innocuous looking white box. As if benignly awaiting its party piece performance.

" There's some meat in there now. " I said. " God knows how long it's been in there. But; I'm Not opening that fucking door! "

Wet Paint? Did somebody just say " Wet Paint "? Ye know it, don't ye? After just a heart beats hesitation, we found ourselves inexorably moving in on that fridge. Its magnetic draw emanated from that plain, white, harmless looking door.

I saw my own hand reaching out for it. The moment had a dream like quality. I pulled. The door swung open. We looked inside .....

For a brief and curious moment, I was aware of this dark lump of substance, laying there in the bottom of the fridges spotlessly white interior. Black, it was. Tinged with green. I think I might even have reached in to poke it with my finger.


" JAYZUSS FUCKING CHRIIIIST!!!!! " The Stench hit us, simultaneously and with all the force of a runaway juggernaut! You have Never seen us move so fast! The G Force had Dean O's glasses stuck to his bulging eyeballs as my hat blew off and rolled behind me with the ballistic velocity of my own rush for the compound, and sacred fresh air!

My kitchen's huge. It's almost like a small cathedral out there. But that fridge managed to swamp every corner of it with a smell beyond description, in a nano second of my opening that damn door.

And so it was that Dean and I spent the next thirty minutes, standing around outside, in the compound. Both under dressed. Both complaining bitterly of the freezing cold night. But neither of us capable of being persuaded, by any power on earth, to go back into that vile kitchen.

Today, I sealed the fridge door up with tape. It's out on my tip. Soon it'll go in a skip and then I'll be rid of it. God help the man who ever again opens that door! Maybe, before I commit it to the land fill, I should daub on the front of its door; " Pandora's Box "