The Big Freeze

My mother reckons Paul had the swine flu. When I gave him her diagnosis, made from many miles away, without seeing him or having any medical basis for her opinion, he lit up like last week’s Christmas tree in a power surge. At least someone recognised how close he’d come to the jaws of death in the run up to Christmas. I just wonder did he notice there was no angel on that tree – that the only angel was me, ministering to his every need. And cooking like crazy since he’d been so busy and then sick. There was no freezer in the house in Cobh when we moved into it, just an icebox in the fridge that might open if you knelt in front of it to say sweet prayers. If it didn’t respond to those, you’d have to wave a knife in its face and tell it you weren’t afraid to use it – but you had to do it with conviction, thrust it like you really meant business – then you might get lucky and get to eat supper.


So I let my feelings be known to Paul – I wanted a freezer. I’m used to batch cooking – making double and treble of many dishes and then just cooking a couple of times in the week. The extra cooking wasn’t as much of a problem as the extra washing up – plates and saucers, mugs and glasses, piled up on top of each other like the passengers on a rush hour bus going no-where – certainly not getting as far as the delph presses. So I located a freezer on donedeal.ie. It was perfect – a three drawer under the counter freezer – once more there would be ice-cream on demand in my life. And Paul rose to the challenge – an over an hour long journey to Cahir in the dark and lashing rain seemed to bring out his hunter-gatherer instincts. He gladly crouched over the wheel along the back-roads of Cahir, peering into the darkness for landmarks we’d been told to watch out for, not even losing his temper when I directed him down the wrong roads – every epic journey has its twists and turns. The freezer was perfect – exactly what was needed. We lugged it into the car, refuelled ourselves in the town for the journey home. Then, suddenly, there was a clap of metaphoric thunder, everything seemed to go dark, silence descended – Paul asked me was I delighted that I had got ‘my’ freezer.                  

                             
                        

My freezer. How was it my freezer? Was the food that was going to be kept in it not going to be eaten by both of us? Would he ever again brandish a knife at a carrot and tell it he'd skin it alive? Was the only grating he was going to do be on my nerves as he relished his dinners produced my his 'housewife' girlfriend? Was I now, officially, utterly and completely in charge of the kitchen?
         No, he'd definately cook again. He just meant I was more eager to get the freezer. Alright. And he'd cook tomorrow. Good. And the day after as well. Great. Time for the big thaw.