Living in a three-woman household as I do, stopped becoming easy once my daughters returned from university for good. I’d become used to having my own space, while my girls had been responsible for running their own homes and had thus developed their own ideas about the food they wished to eat.

Over the years, two of us had stopped eating meat and one had become gluten intolerant. Two prefer skimmed milk while one of us opts for semi-skimmed; the one ‘trying to give up dairy’ tends to buy soya milk – and as that’s expensive, when it’s on offer we end up with a fridge full of the stuff. Two of us prefer orange juice while the other likes apple juice. Then we have a selection of cheeses – two of us are quite adventurous, but when it comes to Cheddar, we have to have both full fat and the reduced fat version. Oh and the vegetables!

The reason I’m talking about the contents of my fridge (and yes – the same principles can apply to my freezer contents too) is that both have become full to bursting point. Yesterday I almost opened a carton of orange juice that appeared to be about to explode; it had been pushed behind a myriad of other items and had probably been open for over a week and was going off. I can remember considering myself lucky that I’d found it in time.

I’m considering this all now, because I’ve just read that someone's fridge freezer has exploded. Apparently the door blew off with such force that it ripped out three internal doors, lifted the kitchen roof, forced open the loft latch and smashed chunks out of the wall. The householder sustained ‘serious’ cuts and bruises and a fire officer said that there was ‘food everywhere’. I can imagine…

While I’m not suggesting that the appliance exploded because it was bursting with fermenting perishables, I wouldn’t mind betting that the manufacturer wishes that this could be the case. Exploding fridge freezers aren’t common, so this story will be big. Consumers will of course end up blaming the brand – however innocently the appliance may have behaved – and the manufacturer will have its work cut out, rekindling confidence and winning over the consumers once more.

I wish them luck... And perhaps they could start by designing a fridge freezer that goes up to the ceiling, for families like mine?

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Yours,

Jan Hobbs