Forced by circumstances to overcome my own triviality - damn!

[brixtonbrood]

I want a new fridge. Old fridge is horrid and frumpy, freezer compartment insufficiently big, little plastic bits broken, keeps icing up, freezes carrots, has no autodefrost, unfashionable manufacturer.
Old fridge has now started freezing eggs - hurrah, is now definitively broken, can ring John Lewis and say "give me new Bosch which will fit dimensions xyz".
However, struck by evil pangs of green conscience and dropped into local electrical supplies/repair shop unaccountably left in Clapham High St from late 1960's.
Can you fix fridge thermostat?
No [hurrah, have salved conscience], but Sanjay the Fridge man did Dave's fridge and he did a really good job - here's his number.
I lost the first Postit for blatantly Freudian reasons, but returned to ask for it again. Sanjay Who Knows About Fridges said that he would come around the next evening, and it would cost 55 quid.
He has now been, dissembled and reassembled the fridge, taken his cheque and gone.
I have a clean green conscience and I am at least two hundred quid up on the deal. Am I happy? Am I bobbins.
The only thing that will cheer me up is spending a token proportion of the money saved on something that will be fun, extravagant, ethically correct, and take up no space at all - suggestions gratefully received - but I suspect it's going to go on a B&B in the Lake District on the way to and from Worldcon.

Comments

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Good God, a Fridge-Wrangler, I had no idea such people existed.

I have always thought that 'white goods' repair man would be a good alternative career when all programming jobs have been outsourced to China (ha ha), since it seems to consist of getting a call-out fee and either
a) doing one of a very few trivial things (many of which I have successfully done, and we have only had to have the utility room floor replaced once due to my experiments in white goods repair)
b) sucking air thorough ones teeth and saying 'ooh, the motor's gone, it's not worth repairing, I can do you a good deal on a new one'.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Freaky isn't it - as I said, there's something very odd about Solo Electrics of Clapham - it's their constant stream of helpful cheery knowledgable advice that makes me think they might be Autons.
If the fridge continues to work I might even go back to buy the genuinely portable DAB they showed me (bathroom radio has died about six months too early for me to buy a reasonably priced portable DAB so I'm dithering between forking out 70 quid for Solo's small, light, overpriced one, developing my biceps even more by toting the kitchen DAB around, (weight approx the same as Tiny, who is the reason that I don't need that exercise anyway) or spending twenty quid on a non-DAB and constantly being irritated that I'm listening to You And Yours when I could be catching a repeat of Round The Horn on BBC 7).

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

The DAB sounds like a good idea.
Thanks to celestialweasel's early-adopter enthusiasm, we have 2 DAB radios in the house which we don't actually use: one a very very early one that looks like a car radio, the other a "portable" (if you don't mind a three foot antenna sticking out of your pocket) Prestel which eats batteries for brekkie and resets your station whenever it feels like it. Neither have speakers. And we have a car DAB too (also v. v. dodgy).
So let me know about your portable DAB if you get one!
I suspect that eventually DAB will be eaten alive by satellite radio and these will all go the way of the Armstrong Band.

[jinty]

Freecycle the fridge (it's a yahoo group -- search for your local Freecycle area, bound to be one) and then get an A-rated fridge. Won't save you any money, but will mean your fixed fridge is used by someone deserving and you are even doing better than you were because your old one is unlikely to be as highly economical as the ones you can get nowadays.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Solves the green part of the equation, but would be even more recklessly strav, old fridge does unfortunately still work adequately for purpose and is not that old - I think it was probably A rated, though not AAA star rated like the latest Bosches.

nah

[jinty]

a) you would be helping the deserving, like donating to Oxfam, by enabling somene who would otherwise not be able to get a good working fridge to have one.
b) you would get an even greener fridge, AAA
c) sometimes one must be strav. Or burst.
d) It will make you happy and that is worth it. For sometimes. You will look at it and beam inside.

Unless you really really can't afford it of course, in which case all bets are off. But if it's protestant work ethic (plus green conscience) that is holding you back, cast to the winds!

hand-made silver

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

jewellery, extravagant flowers.