fridge (n.)shortened and altered form of refrigerator, 1926, an unusual way of word-formation in English; perhaps influenced by Frigidaire (1919), name of a popular early brand of self-contained automatically operated iceless refrigerator (Frigidaire Corporation, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), a name suggesting Latin frigidarium “a cooling room in a bath.” Frigerator as a colloquial shortening is attested by 1886.

Dear Reader, this week I’ve encountered the word ‘fridge’ four times from different online chums. The first was a conversation between Red Frank and TNT over at MEROVEE…

The following day, Leggy’s significant other, Poppy mentioned it during a girlie Twitter DM convo…

Later that evening, Hugo and I were chatting on Twitter DM about the back cover artwork The Underdog Anthology. He has two stories included.

I mentioned the importance of the number nine in Norse mythology and Hugo replied with a we-key link to the plot of a book I’ve never read…

Dirk Gently, who calls himself a “holistic detective”, has happened upon what he thinks is a rather comfortable situation. A wealthy man in the record industry has retained him, spinning a story about being stalked by a seven-foot-tall, green-eyed, scythe-wielding monster. Dirk pretends to understand the man’s ravings involving potatoes and a contract signed in blood coming due; when in reality, Dirk is musing about what he might do if he actually receives payment for his “services” – such as getting rid of his refrigerator, which is so filthy inside that it has become the centrepiece of a show-down between himself and his cleaning woman. The seriousness of his client’s claims becomes clear when Dirk arrives several hours late for an appointment to find a swarm of police around his client’s estate. The aforementioned client is found in a sealed and heavily barricaded room, his head neatly removed several feet from his body and rotating on a turn-table. While at his recently deceased client’s house, he discovers that his client had a son. However, after Dirk disconnects the television set the boy had been watching, the boy promptly breaks Dirk’s nose.

Nearly incapacitated by guilt, Dirk resolves to take his now-late client’s wild claims seriously. During his investigation, Gently encounters exploding airport check-in counters, the gods of Norse mythology, insulting horoscopes, a sinister nursing home, a rhino-phagic eagle, an I Chingcalculator (to which everything calculated above the value of 4 is apparently ‘a suffusion of yellow’), a god who gives his powers to a lawyer and an advertising executive in exchange for clean linen, and an attractive American woman who gets angry when she can’t get pizzadelivered in London.

Finally, yesterday afternoon, Cade included the word and the importance of chilling in one of his Sync Miss For Him scribblings…

 

*I know, Clicky… I don’t know what it means either, but you put a link to ‘Fools Gold’ in our Calendar Girl post at the start of this week…*

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THURSDAY EVENING

“What are you looking for?” I asked Thing 2’s backside upon entering the kitchen. The rest of him was concealed behind the open fridge door; a common enough sight these days that it’s practically a fixture.

“Nothing,” Kit Kat grunted in reply. Closing the door he turned to face me, and I wondered, not for the first time, at how a tiny little baby could turn into the hulking teenager stood before me now. He popped his backside up easily onto the kitchen worktop. “I’m doing maths homework,” he said.

“Really? In the fridge? I’m gonna make your father some scrambled eggs on toast. Would you like some?”

Kit Kat tried to play it cool but the ‘Food!’ sparkle in his eyes gave him away. “Erm…alright then.”

The response from Thing 1 upon being asked was entirely different. “Oh yes please. Thank you Mum!” Loopy said brightly before turning his attention back to his game. “Okay Deadly, do as I tell you this time and we’ll get ’em for sure,” he barked into his microphone.

Returning to Thing 2’s favourite room, I decided to enlist his help. “You know the fridge?” I asked him.

“Yeesss…” Kit Kat drawled. “I am familiar with the appliance.”

“Can you get me the eggs, butter and milk from it? I’ll cook the eggs, you do the toast and you can tell me about your homework.” I bent down to pull the toaster out from the cupboard under the sink.

Amazingly he returned with everything I asked for and set about toasting the bread. I cracked nine eggs into a mixing bowl, added a dollop of milk and a pinch of salt.

“We’re doing quadratic equations,” Kit Kat informed me as I set about beating up the mixture.

I stopped my beating to melt the butter in a pan. “Algebra?”

“Yes,” he replied and then starting reeling off a bunch of gobbledygook containing a lot of ‘xs’, ‘pluses’, ‘overs’ and numbers that made no sense to me at all, except to evoke a distant memory of the perpetually smiling face of Mr Fong, my Form and Maths Teacher from school. I concentrated on transforming to pale yellow mixture, now transferred to the oily, hot pan, into fluffy, golden, eggy clouds.

“Doesn’t quadratic have something to do with four?” I asked when Kit Kat paused for breath. He was still applying a thin layer of butter, precisely from corner to corner to the first slices of toast to have pop out of the toaster.

I sighed, put down the pan and grabbed another knife. Quickly I slavered the cooling remainder of the toast with deft strokes of buttery goodness. “I’m sorry Kitten, I haven’t done algebra for over 30 years, I don’t think I can help you with your homework,” I said dishing the buttered toast out onto three plates and piling even portions of scrambled eggs over the top.

“I wasn’t asking for your help, Mater,” he said with a look of bemusement. “Can you pass me the ketchup?”

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Dear Reader, have a Song… ❤