Ice Cold in Acton
9th September 2006. Saturday.
Mmmmmm…weekend. Lie in, pub lunch then laze about talking nonsense, recharging the batteries. Sounds good.
No sir! We spent the weekend installing a gigantic fridge the size of a squash court in our warehouse. Here’s the space we had to fill (that’s Arena’s Dutch masterpiece, Ronald, waving).
We originally thought (hoped) that this might be a “roll out of bed, turn up and supervise”-type occasion, fully replete with serious nodding and delegation-style behaviour. Rather than the “this fridge appears to be made of razor wire, it’s raining and slippery and no, we haven’t got any titanium gloves or supernatural strength with which to hold on to it before it slices our skin from our hands and rends the tendons from our bones” wake up call that we actually enjoyed.
Just to add some Monty Python style absurdity to the situation we happened to have the world’s favourite Irish leg waggler’s Rolls Royce Phantom parked up in our warehouse at the time. Our landlord is an amazing, larger than life character and his businesses happen to deal with lots of snazzy celebs. We agreed, somewhat foolhardily, to allow the gigantic (and very ungreen) motor to be parked in our warehouse over the weekend, prior to going to service. Car thieves please note: it’s not there any more, so please don’t burgle us.
So, we unloaded the giant fridge, sinews straining and eyes popping, with the added challenge of trying not to ding an inordinately expensive car parked right in the way.
Anyway, enough blah blah blah…here are our pics of getting our fridge in on a rainy but very entertaining Saturday nine months ago…
Stage 1: Impressed.
The fridge man is here, in his big truck. He must have loads of umpa lumpa style helpers to unload that giant wagon of his. The whole thing is full of fridge…they couldn’t have sent him alone…could they?
Stage 2: Denial.
Hmmm. He appears to be alone. Perhaps the helpers will come out soon. His name is “Klaas” after all. How could he let us down with a name like that?!
Stage 3: Gratefully received diversionary Rolls Royce (why isn’t there always one?)
Our physical torment and non-manliness are not things to dwell on at this stage, so instead we happily introduce the car we really really hope we didn’t dent.
Stage 4: Achievement
We made it! We emptied the whole trailer of fridge!
Stage 5: Self-awareness
Well, actually, he did most of the hard work, even without any umpa lumpa help. And he had time not only to make a phone call, but also to roll a cigarette. And he didn’t even appear to be bleeding. Klaas is well named.
Stage 6: Cover up
No one must ever know. We must always tell tall tales of how we unloaded the fridge ourselves, in a meteor shower. Klaas? Who is this “Klaas” of whom you speak?
A brilliant day, and one we shall always remember.
Our flowers now sit happily in 6.4 degrees Celsius environmental optimality every day, comfortable as can be. No baking hot florist’s window for our flowers. No sir. That’s why our flowers live longer and are the freshest flowers possible. Thanks be to Klaas.
Here’s the finished fridge, up and running:
Our only regret? That we never had that game of squash in it. Now that it’s stuffed full of flowers every day, we’ll never have that chance again.
Filed under: Setting up on May 21st, 2007
Did you like this post? Why not subscribe?
via your newsreader Flowers…uncut RSS Feed
Leave a Reply