THE RECTANGULAR CAVE OF ICY WONDER

I was surprised to learn today (from Google of course) that you should probably defrost your fridge "once or twice a year" and not... "when there's so much ice around the freezer box that the light doesn't work and you can no longer shut the fridge door".

Hmm. So far it's taken me all day to thaw out *ahem* four and a half years of ice. I have a feeling the actual Ice Age might have melted faster.

It's one of those jobs I never even really thought about; I just went on using my fridge until the icebox wouldn't open (by which point I had an actual freezer anyway) and forgot all about it.

Then this week I noticed that everything in the fridge was suspiciously cold and wet, and yes, the door wasn't closing properly. The lid of the butter for example had collected a reservoir of snow-melt, the carrots were damp, and the fresh pasta (still in its bag) looked like it had been outside in the rain.

So today, in a noble effort to do something about it, I took everything out of the fridge, disposed of the indescribable black vegetable mulch that had slipped down at the back (at some point in March 2018 according to the use-by date), cleaned the entire fridge, switched it to zero, and left the door open.

It's still going.

Drippety drip, keeping me awake. I've stuffed towels in the bottom, angled the glass plate so that all the drips run off into the vegetable tray, and I'm now letting nature take its melty course.

After a while, the ice around the push-in button that toggles the lightbulb melted and in a familiar glow, the lovely old fridge-light came on! That was a treat - proved at least that my fridge still works - kind of.

Then, a little later when I'd gaffa-taped the switch up to preserve the bulb (the door's been open for about ten hours), the freezer box lid suddenly fell open. Finally free of the ice that had cased it shut for months and months, it sprang open like an emergency hatch, to reveal what I can only describe as a rectangular cave of icy wonder.

I say a cave, but of course the entire freezer box was (and sort of still is) a single lump of solid white ice. I really needed to have done this ages ago. 

So this afternoon, I watched as the thaw continued slowly in the freezer box. A flap of something green appeared first. This must be the excitement that archaeologists have when digging through ancient glaciers, I thought, The tip of a spear, the tooth of a mammoth? 

The edge of a packet of peas. Perfectly preserved in there since 2017 AD: a simpler time for us hunter-gatherers. There's something else in there too, but it hasn't fully shown itself yet - a cardboard pack with the words '2 for 1' printed on it. What will it be? A lasagna ready meal for emergencies? A packet of three-year-old sausages? We, like many a glacial-archaeologist, must wait for the thaw to continue, to find out what treasures were buried in that long forgotten ice age.

So the drippage continues. I made toasted bagels under the grill and then held the hot grill pan underneath the drip-tray. It helped a little bit, but the Narnia-level enchantment was still thick. I must leave the fridge-ice overnight to make the long and leaky phase transition from solid back to liquid, and hope that there's not more ice-water than the vegetable tray can carry. I may wake up to a flood.

Twice a year! You know I can't help feel there's a lesson in there for me about doing a thing quicker and more often. Oh well. At least I'll be able to make ice cubes again.