Alder's Tone

The little lad has had a great day so far. He's currently asleep after a hard morning of present opening. He needed absolutely no encouragement this morning when he saw the huge pile Santa left last night. He even helped pass presents over to his Mummy, Granny and Grandpa too. Although "passing" became a bit too much of a chore and quickly turned into "throwing". Not good for the Ming Vase that Granny got.

We have gone a little on the conservative side for food this year. We always get our meat from M&S, after gradually reducing it from a wholesale shop to meat only over the years. Only this year that's gone too. The near £50 bird was on in Aldi for £13 - same prep and stuffing, just frozen. As it turns out that's the best decision we've made.

Why? Because on Monday night our fridge freezer packed in. Fridge was warm, freezer was defrosting quite nicely by the time we spotted it on Tuesday night. EVERYTHING out. Except the food in the freezer in the garage, which included the Aldi bird. Had we got the meat from M&S that would have been out too. So no only did we save £37, we saved buying another bird too! OK, there have been some hairy scary moments not finding sausagemeat until the last minute, but then a disaster on this scale wouldn't be without its problems.

With plenty of cool bags, ice blocks, the very kind use of our neighbour's garage fridge, and our beer fridge, we've managed quite well. And with the economy going the way it is, we may going into Comet and offer them half the asking price of a new American style fridge freezer. If ours is going to cost too much to repair, then we may as well!

Our frozen bird left the freezer last night at teatime, overnight in a cool room - sorted. Only it was too icy for lunch, so we've moved lunch to dinner. No disaster, but MOTS did point out the irony of it:

Our freezer broke down and our turkey is still frozen

Merry Christmas!